Princes William & Harry Couldn't Order Late-Night Snacks as Kids

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 20 July 2022

Sure, being a royal means you automatically get a bunch of staff, including kitchen staff, but that doesn't mean that you can just have whatever you want at any time of day or night.

Once again, chef Darren McGrady has regaled us with tales from his time working at Buckingham Palace, and he revealed that late-night snacks were not on the menu—or in his job description.

"We never did any late orders at all!" McGrady said in an interview with Coffee Friend (opens in new tab). "At Buckingham Palace, I lived above the kitchen in the chef quarters and nobody ever came and knocked on the door and said, 'the Queen wants a club sandwich.'"

It's not like the Queen didn't have access to food if she needed it: "In her room was a bowl of fruit, chocolates and some of her favourites," McGrady added. "If she wanted a nibble in the night she’d have one of those. Nor Wills and Harry, for that matter—they were never allowed to summon the chef to make something in the middle of the night."

That's some semblance of normalcy, I suppose?

Elsewhere in the interview, McGrady revealed how to make tea exactly like the Queen drinks hers, in case you have a craving.

"Hot tea has to be hot," the chef explained.

"Tea has to be absolute boiling water poured over the top of it, it has to steep for five minutes, that is the most important part. It’s really, really important when making tea is that it’s made in a teapot—that is a real cup of tea.

"What goes in first? Is it milk or is it tea? Nowadays it doesn’t matter so much, but in the olden days the china was porcelain and the boiling water would crack the cup, so the milk would go in first."

If you're not so much craving the drinkable kind of tea as you are the gossip kind, McGrady has previously revealed a bunch of previously unknown facts about the Royal Family's eating habits. In 2017, he told Marie Claire about some of their most noteworthy habits. Since then, he has elaborated on the Queen's love for chocolate, young William and Harry's special Saturday night treat, the Queen's favorite cake recipe, and Prince Charles' preference for seasonal food, among many other juicy details.

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Bustle and Shape. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.