Prince Harry Did Not Eat Chicken the Royal Way and Picked Food off Other People’s Plates at Restaurant With Meghan
Since stepping down from their roles as working royals, Prince Harry has been free to break some of the old family rules and protocols he once lived by.
One example of this is when he and his wife, Meghan Markle, visited a restaurant in Harlem during their trip to New York City in 2021. Now the restaurant owner is remembering the Duke of Sussex’s eating habits and the way he ate chicken, which isn’t the royal way.
Restaurant owner says Harry ate off another customer’s plate but ‘didn’t lick his fingers’
Melba Wilson owns Melba’s, the eatery the Sussexes made a surprise visit to during their Big Apple trip.
Wilson recalled that the prince actually ate some food from another person’s plate and picked up his chicken when he ate it.
“I did not see him lick his fingers, but he definitely ate a waffle fry from someone else’s table. And he picked up the chicken with his hands, so Harry knows how to eat chicken,” the restauranteur told Page Six.
Royals eat chicken and just about all other foods a certain way
One of the rules in the royal family is that they don’t eat food with their hands.
According to the late Queen Elizabeth II‘s former chef Darren McGrady: “Her Majesty’s Victorian upbringing dictates that the only thing you would pick up and eat with your fingers is afternoon tea.”
He explained that instead of using their hands the royals cut things up with a knife and fork.
“Grapes are the most popular as they are the easiest to eat and cut into smaller bunches of four or five grapes,” McGrady told Insider. “When it comes to pears, the chef said the royals ‘slice off the top and eat it with a teaspoon like a boiled egg! We would do venison burgers. There’d be gorgeous cranberry and everything stuffed into them, but we never set buns out. They would have burgers, but not the buns. So they would eat it with their knife and fork.”
Other royal food rules that have been broken
But the Duke of Sussex isn’t the only member of the family to break a royal food rule, his father also has.
Another one of Queen Elizabeth’s golden rules bans everyone from eating shellfish during engagements and outings. The reason for that is to limit the risk of getting food poisoning. Therefore, family members have always been advised to avoid eating things like oysters.
As former royal butler Grant Harold told Woman & Home magazine: “It is a very sensible move to abandon having seafood when out and about on public duties. We don’t want a member of the royal family having a serious reaction to food poisoning, especially if they’re on an overseas tour.”
However, King Charles loves the delicacy and can’t seem to resist them as he has been photographed eating oysters in the past.
