Growing up at Kensington Palace, Prince Harry and Prince William had a chef to prepare all of their meals, but according to one former royal cook, Princess Diana and Prince Charles disagreed about how they approached family mealtimes.
Mervyn Wycherley, who served as a palace chef for 33 years, recently spoke to the Sun about working with Diana and Charles, joining Princess Diana's former royal protection officer Ken Wharfe on the publication's Royal Exclusive show. “Diana really wanted to experiment away from Mervyn’s food at the palace at that time," Wharfe shared.
The princess—who enjoyed dining out at restaurants with friends in London—was keen for Prince Harry and Prince William to experience a taste of normal life, as former BBC reporter Jennie Bond recently wrote in a column for the i Paper. "I remember William's mother, Diana, telling me that she wanted her two boys to be brought up in a way no other royal princes had been," Bond wrote. "And she did her best to give them an idea of what life beyond the palace walls is like."
Diana even took them to places like theme parks and is said to have treated her kids to McDonald's. However, Prince Charles "was very peculiar about the food that he wanted his family and the staff to eat," per the former security guard, and "believed the army marched on its stomach."
Wharfe revealed one particular instance where the then-Prince of Wales showed clear "disdain" for Prince William's dining choices. “As William got older, of course, he was very keen to go to burger bars and pizza places, but that didn't really sit that comfortably with his father," the former protection officer shared.
Wharfe recalled "coming back from the pizza place and the burger in Kensington High Street" with Prince William, who told his father, "‘Oh papa we just had these amazing burgers!'"
“And there was this sort of look of disdain with him across the prince's face," Wharfe continued, adding that Prince Charles said, "'I don't know why you eat that food when I have this marvelous army of chefs at Kensington Palace."
Chef Mervyn explained that when it came to eating out at restaurants like pizza joints, Harry and William "really didn’t often do that sort of thing, because all of their friends used to do it." Instead, the princes "stuck at home and had real nursery food, it was the old treacle tarts and things like that.”
The King is known for his love of gardening and a real farm-to-table philosophy when it comes to food, so it's not surprising he's not quite a burger and pizza guy. In fact, his stepson Tom Parker Bowles told the Telegraph that King Charles "would be a fantastic food writer" if he wasn't the monarch.
While Charles had his own more formal preferences, Princess Diana would often hang out in the kitchen "reading the Sun," Wycherley shared. "I think it was part of Diana's character, because she had this sort of very friendly approach to all members of the staff actually, and the kitchen—like in everyone's house really—is a focal meeting point for life," Wharfe added.
