How do you become a chef to the British royal family? It’s seems as if I’ve just been terribly lucky and, in fact, that certainly plays a part. But after twenty-five years in kitchens both grand and modest, I remain passionate about food and cooking. And at no time more than when I was cooking for the royal family.
I began cooking at Buckingham Palace shortly after the marriage of Lady Diana and Prince Charles and remained in royal service until the death of Princess Diana in 1997. During that time I rose to senior pastry chef at the palace and then to the prestigious position of Princess Diana’s private chef at Kensington Palace. My fifteen years working for the royal family were key in helping me master my métier. But the experience was ultimately much more than just excellent training—it formed the person I am today. I remember it all with great affection, and with Princess Diana’s death, also a tinge of sadness. This book is written with two goals in mind: to share what I have learned and to set down my memories in print.
Today, as in the past, the word royalty connotes an anointed life, separate and apart from the lives of everyday people. But my experience working for the Windsors was just the opposite. In fact, the royal family, with their traditions and sense of service, made me feel British to the core. And underneath all the external trappings of modern royal life, the royal household is really just a home for a large, extended family with its daily routines, styles, and tastes. Make no mistake, their household, like yours, has its quirks. But what may seem quirky at the outset often has a historical and symbolic underpinning. Learning this made my work as a chef all the richer.
It seems fitting in a way that this book’s arrival coincides so closely with Queen Elizabeth’s eightieth birthday and the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana’s passing. Both of these women affected the path of my life in ways I could never have foreseen. Both deeply impressed me with the notion that although life may include personal passions and interests, it is fundamentally about service toward others. This has been an essential lesson in my work as a chef, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to share my knowledge with others.
When I think back, I realize that my becoming a chef was perhaps preordained. Growing up in Newark, England, food was quite important, not only as a source of pleasure, but also as a source of income. My mum and dad both worked outside the home, my mum as a chef in a local hotel in Nottinghamshire. When your mum is a chef, you learn not to be a fussy eater. Food at home was quite a bit more eclectic than in most British households in the seventies. My sister, brother, and I were introduced at an early age to not only excellent traditional British cooking, but also to French and Italian food. But, I didn’t actually cook much as a child. Instead I was an avid eater.
The real reason I started cooking began in high school. I signed up for a “domestic science” course (in the US it would be called home economics). The best part of it all was that you got to eat what you made! It was a superb situation for a growing boy of fifteen who was constantly hungry.
I learned all sorts of things, including some not on the syllabus. I made pastry dough for tarts and also found out that if you eat jam tarts straight from the oven it will result in excruciating pain as the hot sugar adheres to the top of your mouth. I enjoyed it all and proudly showed off my newfound skills to my family. My mum, who has always enjoyed a life around food, encouraged my early attempts. I think she knew that I would enjoy cooking.
I had always been a hands-on student, excelling in subjects that allowed me to translate academic ideas via a physical experience. In school, cooking classes were one of the few places where such an approach to learning was acceptable. Otherwise school was quite traditionally bookish and I often struggled. Both my parents, bless them, understood that I didn’t have much of an academic nature. The thought of going on to university after high school was daunting for me. So, with my mum’s encouragement, I decided to attend a two-year catering college after graduating from high school at sixteen. The college was about twenty minutes from home, and best of all, it was free.
At the same time, my mum thought a little practical experience was in order. The summer before I started college she got me a job as a dishwasher at the hotel where she worked. John Berry, a wonderful fellow who ran the place, hired me. As you can imagine, the dishwasher occupies the lowest rung in any professional kitchen, and I was to start from the bottom up.
My strategy was to get all the dirty dishes done early in my shift and then to spend the rest of the time watching all the chefs do their work. It was a fascinating place. It was a classic hotel kitchen, which means it was very well set up. There was a cold station, where all the salads, sandwiches, and other cold buffet dishes were prepared. Then there was a sauce station, fish station, and meat station. I rotated myself through the kitchen, always standing behind the chefs, trying not to get in anyone’s way and keeping my eyes open. I didn’t win any awards for excellent dishwashing, but I did my job well and enjoyed being in a professional kitchen. It was a wonderful introduction.
That summer experience gave me a lead over all the other students when I started college in the fall. I was one of the few students who had worked in a professional kitchen. I certainly needed training, though, and my first year was extremely busy with new lessons. I worked hard, and the year seemed to fly by.
Mr. Berry and I had kept up an intermittent correspondence during the course of the year. He had left the hotel in Nottinghamshire and moved to Ballathie House Hotel, a seventeenth-century country house in Perthshire, overlooking the River Tay in Scotland. At the end of my first year, he invited me to Scotland to work for the summer. He thought I showed promise and knew I could work hard. I was excited to travel for the summer and to move up from dishwashing!
After all these years I still recall how wonderful that summer was for me. I had never seen ingredients like this before. Nothing from a can! Gorgeous whole salmon that we would cook, smoke, or brine. Wild grouse and all sorts of local birds. Game in abundance. What a luxurious experience for a kid of seventeen! I worked my tail off that summer, and I reckon Mr. Berry got his money’s worth out of me.
I started to gain confidence in the kitchen and returned to school in the fall ready to put all my experience to good use. It did indeed pay off. I quickly moved through the ranks of my classmates and graduated at the top of my class. One of my teachers, who had been especially pessimistic about my prospects when I started college, was quite surprised at how well I performed. I wonder what she would think now if she learned that I went on to cook for the Queen of England and Princess Diana!
Though many of my classmates were perfectly content to remain close to home, I knew I didn’t want to stay in Newark as a local chef. My experience in Scotland had definitely piqued my interest in learning what the outside world could offer. But where should I go? London, of course!
My mum and dad were, as always, supportive, although I expect my dad wasn’t too pleased at the cost of setting his son up in London. Nor were my brother and sister thrilled when they considered how my career dreams might be siphoning off funds which, no doubt, they could have put to good use. My grandmother was quite convinced that I was heading toward danger. After all, an eighteen-year-old lad on his own in London would clearly come to no good. No good at all.
The one stipulation from both my parents was that I needed to have at least the inkling of a job before I left. Initially I considered applying for a job in the Royal Air Force. A good friend, Pete Males, spoke highly of his military cooking experience. He had retired as a warrant officer and came to Clarendon College as a lecturer to finish his career. But it is the RAF and you do have to go through basic training. Plus, the commitment was a whopping fifteen years. I just wasn’t quite ready for that.
In the restaurant kitchen at the Savoy
The other possibility was hotel work. I had some experience, of course. And in the year I graduated, 1980, the most elegant food was still being served in hotels in London. I applied for positions with both the Waldorf Hotel and the Savoy. I was accepted at both and decided on the Savoy. I traveled off to London confident that I could handle myself in any culinary situation.
By day two, my confidence had evaporated. There were seventy chefs in the kitchen, and I was the last fellow on the list. How could I have been so puffed up? I knew nothing! At least that was how I felt. The first week I just watched the chefs and quaked in my boots. Then I went back to my little rented room and cried.
While the Savoy Hotel was—and remains—a glamorous place, the Savoy kitchen was straight out of Victorian England. There were actually coal ovens at some stations. Pakistani kitchen helpers would come in with huge buckets of coal and fire up the ovens. Temperature control was limited. There was no air-conditioning, and it was a blazingly hot kitchen to work in during the summer months and only tolerably warm in the winter.
The chefs ranged in age from eighteen to thirty-five and many came from France or Germany. It wasn’t uncommon for fistfights to break out among competitive chefs. The days were long. Fifteen- to eighteen-hour shifts were the norm, and there were many times I collapsed on the subway after my shift and missed my stop. I had never been so tired in my life.
A bleary-eyed McGrady family after sleeping overnight on the Mall. Brother Chris is taking the photo.
In my two years at the Savoy I rotated through a number of stations and advanced to a position just below chef de Partie. It was a thoroughly exhausting and exhilarating experience. Many of the chefs I worked with remain good friends to this day. But we all moved on. You simply could not remain at the Savoy a long time. Burnout was inevitable.
Toward the end of my second year, London was frantically busy primping for a royal wedding. In 1982 Prince Charles wed Lady Diana Spencer in one of the most lavish royal weddings in history. My mum was quite fond of the royal family, and she and my dad decided to come down to London and camp out on the Mall in hopes of getting a glimpse of Lady Di. I joined them. I was already thinking of moving out of the Savoy kitchens and considering my next step. As I watched the royal entourage pass on its way to St. Paul’s Cathedral I wondered how a new address would look on my resume. Buckingham Palace, for example?
