The Foods Queen Elizabeth Was Known to Love That Still Feel Surprisingly Modern

A monarch who dined off gold-rimmed china and employed a personal chef for decades doesn’t sound like someone whose eating habits would translate to an ordinary kitchen. Her actual day-to-day food choices tell a different story than the formal state banquets most people picture.

Long before certain eating habits became trendy talking points, Queen Elizabeth was already quietly doing several of them at her own table.

She Skipped Starches at Almost Every Meal

Away from formal state dinners, the Queen’s everyday meals leaned heavily on protein and vegetables rather than bread, pasta, or potatoes. Grilled fish or chicken paired with vegetables and a large salad made up her typical lunch and dinner, with starchy sides reserved almost entirely for official occasions.

She was also famously precise about how she ate the fruit she did allow herself, peeling and slicing a banana with a knife and fork rather than eating it by hand. That combination, minimal starch paired with a genuinely careful approach to portions, reads a lot like the protein-forward eating patterns plenty of people now follow deliberately.

Garlic and Onions Were Completely Off the Menu

Long before low-FODMAP diets and stomach-conscious eating became common talking points, the Queen’s kitchen was already operating under a strict no-pungent-aromatics policy. Her former chef Darren McGrady explained that “garlic and strong onions were a big no-no” throughout his time cooking for the royal family.

The restriction reportedly traced back to Victorian-era etiquette around strong smells rather than any modern dietary reasoning, though the practical result looks strikingly similar to habits plenty of people now adopt for digestive comfort. Prince Philip, notably, ignored the rule entirely and ate garlic whenever he wanted.

Her Everyday Drink Order Reads Like a Modern Cocktail Menu

Rather than a sweet, elaborate mixed drink, the Queen’s go-to order was a simple gin and Dubonnet, a fortified wine aperitif mixed with a splash of gin and lemon. Reports describe it plainly as “Queen Elizabeth II’s preferred mixed drink,” a habit she reportedly picked up from her own mother.

That low-key, bitter-leaning aperitif style is essentially what cocktail menus have circled back around to in recent years, favoring simple, low-sugar drinks over elaborate sweetened mixers. A drink order from decades ago fits comfortably on a contemporary cocktail list without needing any updating at all.

She Made No Apologies About Loving Chocolate

For someone often associated with restraint and formality, the Queen had a well-documented soft spot for chocolate, and specifically the dark variety over anything milkier or sweeter. Her former chef put it plainly: “The Queen was definitely a chocoholic, she loves dark chocolate.”

That preference for dark over milk chocolate lines up closely with how chocolate gets talked about today, where darker, less-sweetened versions are generally treated as the more sophisticated, better-regarded choice. It’s a small detail, but one that puts her taste closer to a modern chocolate aisle than a vintage one.

Her Favorite Dessert Never Went Near an Oven

The Queen’s single favorite cake wasn’t baked at all. Chocolate Biscuit Cake is built from crushed biscuits bound together with melted chocolate and set in the refrigerator rather than cooked, a method closer to a modern no-bake dessert than a traditional baked cake.

Her enthusiasm for it was apparently hard to miss in the palace kitchen. Her chef recalled that “the Chocolate Biscuit Cake is the only cake that goes back again and again” until the entire thing is gone. That same fridge-set, no-bake format has become genuinely trendy in recent years, long after it was already a fixture on her tea table.