For Princess Diana, it was important to give her kids "normal" experiences growing up, so instead of just eating elaborate palace dinners, Prince Harry and Prince William developed a taste for foods like burgers and pizza, too. However, former royal chef Darren McGrady says that Queen Elizabeth didn't share in her grandkids' tastes.
In a 2020 interview with Us Weekly, McGrady, who worked at Buckingham Palace before becoming a chef to Diana and her boys, said that Queen Elizabeth "never had pizza."
"I didn't start cooking pizza until I moved across to Kensington Palace," he added, sharing that he made the dish "all the time for William." The royal chef even invented a special pizza recipe just for the future King.
"In my second cookbook, The Royal Chef at Home, there's a chicken tikka masala pizza because he loves Indian food," McGrady said. "The pizza combined the two."
Today, home chef Princess Kate loves to make pizza at home with her kids George, 12, Charlotte, 10, and Louis, 7.
"I really enjoy making pizza dough with George and Charlotte because they like getting their hands messy," she said during a 2018 royal engagement at a community center. In 2023, William and Kate even picked up pizza from a local food truck themselves when they treated members of a Welsh mountain rescue team to a treat.
As for what Queen Elizabeth did like to eat, McGrady says that she stuck to tried-and-true British classics and French fare. "The Queen never was a foodie," he said on his YouTube channel, noting that her favorite food was a sandwich called a jam penny.
In fact, the late Queen ate it every day of her life since she was five, with the simple meal containing bread topped with strawberry jam and butter. "We’d make the jam at Balmoral Castle with gorgeous Scottish strawberries from the gardens," McGrady added.
