My earliest food memories involve vague recollections of rosehip syrup and Farley’s Rusks. But I do remember having a tomato sandwich, aged about five at a friend’s house, with salt and pepper on lustily buttered sliced white bread. It was the greatest thing I’d ever tasted.
Tom Parker Bowles, our food critic
My mother did most of the cooking when I was growing up. She is a naturally good cook, everything from roast chicken and pork chops to tarragon chicken, smoked sausages in cream, and asparagus drenched in butter. As well as serious scrambled eggs and a mean cheese omelette. We had vegetables from the garden, game shot by my father and fish that he had caught. The fridge was always full of good snacks.
My father’s one recipe involved steak being cooked in a wire toast rack on the top of the Aga. The room would fill with smoke, and the top was coated in burnt fat. But it did taste very good indeed. My mother, who had to clean it up, was less impressed and it was soon banned.
We rarely, if ever, ate out in the country. Aside from fish and chips from The Golden Fish bar in Corsham, which we adored. But when we went to London we’d have lunch at Italian restaurants such as La Fontana and Mimmo D’Ischia with our wonderful maternal grandmother. We would eat spaghetti Bolognese and veal paillard, and drink as much Coca-Cola as we wanted.
We grew up eating locally, seasonally and organically, way before they became the overused buzzwords they are today – my mother shopped in the butcher, fishmonger, bakery and greengrocer. But when Sainsbury’s opened in Chippenham at the start of the 80s it was like that moment in The Wizard of Oz where it moves from monochrome to technicolour. Ice Magic! Birds Eye Chicken Pies! Butterscotch Angel Delight and huge variety packs of Monster Munch! We wanted it all, although my mother was fairly strict in what we were allowed.
The best bit about Eton, says Tom, was the tuck shop
Food at my prep school, Summer Fields in Oxford, was not just dire, it was downright atrocious, properly vile and debased. Breakfast involved great salty flaps of bacon, covered in white scum. Fried eggs were as hard as hockey pucks and had a deep fishy tang. Sausages were little more than slurry-filled condoms, while tea was weak and mean. Lunch was equally vile, usually mince, watery, grey and gristly, slopped on top of turgid, criminally overcooked spaghetti for Bolognese. Or dribbled over sullen boiled potatoes riddled with black eyes. The only edible things were crisp sandwiches on Sunday night. As a result, I was always hungry. And it turned a healthy appetite into an all-encompassing greed.
I once stumbled across a master’s desk drawer, unlocked and stuffed with sweets. We only had a ‘ration’ twice a week, so it was like striking gold. I was subtle at first, removing the odd Quality Street or Fruit Bonbon. But greed got the better of me, and before long I was wolfing down Mars Bars and Milky Ways. The crime, inevitably, was found out and the headmaster summoned the whole school. ‘Now I know exactly who the culprit is…’ he growled. ‘No you bloody don’t,’ I thought. He never did discover who it was. Until now.
Sharing a hotdog with Prince Charles, 1981.
Food at Eton was far better, and I spent rather too long in Rowlands, the brilliant tuck shop, skiving off games and stuffing my gob with bacon sandwiches, Nice ’n’ Spicy Nik Naks, Milk Gums, microwave burgers and Brown Cows (Coke and vanilla ice cream). I grew rather fat as a result.
The fourth of June was our speech day, when parents came with picnics. And while some would have a full three-course lunch served by butlers on a linen-covered table, my mother and aunt would do a last-minute rush around Sainsbury’s: prawn sandwiches, cold cocktail sausages, luridly pink taramasalata and pickled onion Monster Munch. Pure picnic perfection.
Perhaps the worst family holiday we ever had was in 1994, in Sintra, Portugal. Not only did we sit in a damp cloud for most for the week, the cook turned out to be a News of the World ‘source’, and there were paparazzi lurking in the garden. But I do remember driving down the coast, into the bright sunlight of the Algarve, and having grilled sardines on the beach. It almost made up for the past few days of hell.
My mother never had bread rolls thrown at her outside Sainsbury’s, nor has she ever drunk gin. And although she sure knows her claret, as well as English wine, she is a very moderate drinker.
Caviar and native oysters would be a decadent last meal
I became a food writer because I was sacked from pretty much any other job I ever did. I could string a sentence together and eat. Twenty-five years on, I’m still here and still loving every moment. God I’m lucky, and I’ll never, ever grow bored of food. Although, as I get older, I crave simplicity more and more.
His Majesty The King is a true food hero. There is nothing he doesn’t know about rare breeds of cattle, heritage varieties of plum and apple, the joys of mutton and wild mushrooms, and the oozing allure of a stinky cheese. Every monarch has had their own tastes and preferences, and the King’s interest in sustainable, regenerative farming is well known, and was way ahead of its time. His advice is invaluable, his knowledge profound.
His mum’s buttery asparagus was a childhood favourite
I’ve eaten many strange things in my life, all over the world, from insects and dog soup, to maggot cheese and cold blood soup. The odd pig’s anus, too. But none of those compare to the utterly bizarre things people shove down their maws on social media. Give me deep-fried bee pupae over cottage cheese cookie dough any day.
My comfort food is cottage pie with peas, roast chicken or an aggressively spicy noodle soup. Oh, and a McDonald’s cheeseburger, too.
My fridge is a chilly glass menagerie of endless chilli sauces and oils, random pickles, blocks of charcuterie, processed cheese slices, Parmesan, limes, fresh chillies, dog food and takeaway rice from two days back. But never, ever tomatoes or eggs. They live outside the fridge.
My last dinner would start with a kilo of good caviar, blinis, lemon and tiny baked potatoes. I’d also have a dozen native oysters, a couple of oeufs en gelée, roast chicken with gravy, roast potatoes and peas. For pudding, a Welsh rarebit. To drink, Clamato Bloody Marys, margaritas and lashings of Cheval Blanc 1982. I think that would stand me in good stead for the next chapter.
