A former royal chef has revealed the rather bizarre checks that the Queen’s food must go through before it is served to her.
Graham Tinsley, who cooked for the Queen on multiple occasions, said that food had to go through an X-Ray before it could be served to Her Majesty at state banquets.
The chef said that a satellite kitchen would be set up in the grounds before the food would be delivered on foot, MyLondon reports.
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He told HELLO: “For higher calibre banquets, we’re required to put all our food, containers, knives and kitchen equipment through an X-ray machine whilst motorcycles then drove us into the castle.”
The chef also revealed that if they were catering for a Heads of State banquet that “all the catering staff have to meet at a police station and get a motorcycle ride into Cardiff Castle.
However, he added the extreme measures were only in place when heads of state were in attendance otherwise the rules were much more relaxed.
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He said: “If we were just cooking for the Royal Family, we weren’t always aware of the security. It only changed if there were heads of state coming over, and then the security was really, really tight.”
(Image: Getty Images)
“Some banquets even had codenames to protect their security!”
Whilst the Queen is no stranger to the formalities of state banquets she is apparently much more down to earth when she dines with her family in private, another royal chef, Darren McGrady revealed.
He said: “People always say, ‘oh, the Queen must eat off gold plates with gold knives and forks.’ Yes, sometimes… but at Balmoral she’d eat fruit from a plastic yellow Tupperware container.”
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