What the Queen eats in a day, according to Royal chefs
Un menu royal !
Sa Majesté Elizabeth II n'aime pas les oignons, ne manque jamais l'heure du thé et se préoccupe régulièrement du bien-être culinaire de ses douze chiens royaux. Chef cuisinier à Buckingham Palace durant 15 ans, Darren McGrady ne manque pas d'anecdotes sur les habitudes alimentaires de la Reine et de sa famille. Il en livre quelques une à The Independent...
With a team of world-class chefs, access to the best food that money can buy, and dining rooms at palaces across the UK, you would have thought meal times are always prestigious in the Windsor household. Now the Queen’s former chef, Darren McGrady, has drawn back the curtain and revealed Her Majesty’s private dining habits. The 58-year-old’s primary role during his 15-year tenure at Buckingham Palace was as Queen Elizabeth II’s personal chef.
2. McGrady also worked for other members of the royal family – including Princess Diana, and her sons William and Harry at Kensington Palace. He was cooking for Diana on the night of her death – 31 August 1997. McGrady already had her dinner ready and waiting for her return.
HOW MANY MEALS DOES THE QUEEN EAT IN A DAY? 3. McGrady says the Queen has four meals a day - breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner. For breakfast she keeps things simple. Royal biographer, Katie Nicholl, has previously said: "HRH typically starts with a simple cup of tea and biscuits, followed by a bowl of cereal." (The Guardian previously reported she likes to keep it in Tupperware to preserve its freshness.) 4. This is before moving on to a lunch of grilled fish with wilted spinach or courgettes, according to McGrady. She is also partial to a simple grilled chicken with salad. Then, in the late afternoon, McGrady says, the Queen will have an afternoon tea – scones with jam and clotted cream. He explained: “She’d always have afternoon tea wherever she was in the world. We’d flown out to Australia and were on the Royal Yacht. It was five o’clock in the morning but for the Queen it was five in the afternoon so my first job was making scones.”
5. McGrady says while the Queen never directly said she didn’t enjoy a meal, she would leave a message in a notebook for the staff. “She had a little book on her desk and she would just put a note in there saying ‘I don't want this again’ or something like that,” he explains.
WHAT ARE THE QUEEN’S FAVOURITE FOODS? 6. The Queen might only enjoy small portions of savoury food, but McGrady says she is a glutton for sweet. "She is absolutely a chocoholic," McGrady told Hello! Magazine in 2016. "Anything we put on the menu that had
chocolate on, she would choose, especially chocolate perfection pie [a layered chocolate pie with white and dark chocolate and chocolate shavings]."
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL AT THE PALACE? 7. McGrady says that the most popular meal of the week was always Friday fish and chips. “Everybody loved fish and chips," explained McGrady. "All the staff, 300 staff at Buckingham Palace, all of the chefs would have fish and chips for lunch. But, forget your tartar sauce and your ketchup, we loved it with salad cream."
8. But the other meal closest to the Queen’s heart is not one for the humans: “One of the things that really, really shocked me when I got a job as the Queen's chef was that I wasn't straight away preparing banquets for kings, queens and presidents. I was actually chopping beef, liver and chicken for the Queen's [12] corgis. I later learned that was one of the most important meals of the day when it came to the Queen.” 9. And one of his first tasks as the Queen’s personal chef was peeling carrots for her horses at Balmoral.
ARE THERE ANY FOODS THE QUEEN DOESN’T LIKE? 10. The Queen does not enjoy strong flavours, says McGrady. "The Queen doesn't like garlic... we could never use it at Buckingham Palace.” Shellfish and rare meat are also avoided during royal visits or tours – times when the family cannot afford to be out of action with food poisoning.
DOES THE QUEEN EVER COOK FOR HERSELF? 11. McGrady says that while Prince Philip was an “amazing chef”, and the younger royals like William, Kate, Meghan and Harry, all enjoy cooking, the Queen herself stays out of the kitchen.
12. And no, the Queen was never partial to a McDonalds drive-thru either. “The Queen
never ordered fast food. When you’ve got 20 chefs in the kitchen, why would you? You can call down to the kitchen and order whatever you want,” says McGrady.
WHAT ABOUT SPECIAL OCCASIONS? 13. The biggest food event at the palace is Christmas. Although they go for traditional options. "It was the same meal every year," he said. "They're actually boring when it comes to festivities. They didn't do hams or anything, just traditional turkeys. We did three turkeys for the Queen and her family in the royal dining room, one for the children's nursery and then more for the 100 or so staff, so everyone had a Christmas lunch." And they didn’t scrimp on dessert – the Christmas pudding would be “decorated in holly, doused in brandy, and the palace steward would carry it, flaming, into the royal dining room”.
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