The Royal Family comes with plenty of quirks and unusual protocols, especially regarding their eating habits. But few are as delightfully specific—or posh—as Queen Elizabeth's preferred method for eating a banana. While most people would casually peel and bite into the fruit, the late Queen insisted on a more refined technique: eating it with a knife and fork.
According to former royal chef Darren McGrady—who worked for Queen Elizabeth for more than a decade—the late monarch would "cut off the bottoms and cut the banana lengthwise, and then cut the banana into tiny slices to eat it with a fork" (via the Express). She cut the banana into bite-sized pieces instead of peeling and eating it, to avoid, in the words of her former chef, "looking like a monkey."
Britain's leading etiquette expert William Hanson agrees on the method—and his recent video demonstrating the knife-and-fork technique went viral.
"Now we don't pick it up and peel it like a primate," he said in an Instagram Reel. "Instead, we use a knife and fork." Hanson—whose new book Just Good Manners, released on May 27—then shows exactly how to slice the banana down the middle and cut it into small circles.
Queen Elizabeth received bananas as a gift from a patient while visiting a hospital in 2008.
While you might imagine members of the Royal Family would only eat bananas at breakfast, McGrady said the fruit is served after dinner as well.
"I am often asked what the Royal Family have for dessert and people are surprised when I say fresh fruit,” McGrady told TODAY Food. "That’s because what Americans call dessert, the Royal Family call pudding. Therefore after a pudding course the royal family will have either cheese or dessert—fruit!"
Apparently, pears aren't sliced up in the usual fashion for members of the Royal Family. McGrady said they "would slice off the top and eat it with a teaspoon like a boiled egg."
He added that Queen Elizabeth wasn't the only royal with very specific banana preferences, sharing that Princess Anne "almost always preferred the bananas almost black—over ripe—because they digested easier."
