Royals, they’re just like us. Well, not really, but one thing we do have in common is our love of food.
And thanks to food magazine Delish, we have the inside scoop on the foods the new King will probably be enjoying around his Coronation, thanks to former royal chefs, Carolyn Robb and Darren McGrady.
Buckingham Palace announced the official recipes for street parties back in February, with a menu including Nadiya Hussain’s Coronation Aubergine and Ken Hom’s Coronation Roast Rack of Lamb with Asian-style Marinade. For himself, we know that King Charles will be enjoying a coronation quiche on the big day.
Here, the former chefs share the foodie rules that King Charles loves to live by…
He doesn’t have a sweet tooth
This one surprised us, as his mother Queen Elizabeth II famously had a penchant for scones with cream and jam, but according to Robb, Charles isn’t as keen: “He really doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth.” He comments that although King Charles was often served cake at afternoon tea, he rarely ate it.
Instead, he favours Italian food. One of his favourite dinners, according to McGrady, is a rack of lamb with wild mushroom risotto, and he’s also a fan of polenta dishes.
He loves eating this organic vegetable
Robb says King Charles is a “great supporter and a great leader of the organic movement”, and he has one of the first organically certified farms in the UK, with an “incredible vegetable garden” at the Duchy Estate.
But his favourite of all his organic veg is wild mushrooms. The King is said to have brought his chefs along to Balmoral to gather mushrooms growing wild there. McGrady tells of how once, the King Charles’s chefs were planning another mushroom-foraging trip when Queen Elizabeth II sent her chefs up the day prior to collect all of the wild mushrooms they could find on the estate. “The Queen comes first to the Queen’s chefs,” he laughs.
He loves plums
Being a fan of organic gardening, King Charles’ favourite fruit is naturally the plums from his garden. His team of chefs poach them and serve with juice and muesli for the King’s breakfast. And when he goes ‘painting in the hills’ as he is said to do, he will occasionally indulge himself in a rare sweet treat, sometimes bringing along a slice of plum pudding.
He didn’t like to eat the same things every day
When it comes to what King Charles likes to eat every day, he tends to keep things varied. “No two days are the same. He was a foodie,” Chef McGrady says.