Gordon Ramsay has some fond memories of cooking for the late Queen Elizabeth II.
On the Tuesday, May 14, episode of the Watch What Happens Live After Show, the famous UK-born chef said preparing meals for the late queen and Princess Diana are “two of the big highlights of my cooking career.”
“I got to cook for her on a couple of occasions,” he said of the British monarch.
Ramsay, 57, added that “sometimes there’s a crazy banquet and it’s all over the place,” but the queen always made time for him.
“The fact that she paid that amount of time and interest in you, just for that moment … there was a line outside the door to meet her and she just wanted to know about food, [Ramsay’s former restaurant at] Claridge’s, the beginning of life,” the British star continued. “She was just so grateful for me being there. A gracious, incredible woman.”
The Hell’s Kitchen star also recalled the “amazing moment” he was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire at a ceremony hosted by the queen.
“That was an incredible moment, being invited up to Holyrood, the Scottish castle, and being given the Order of the British Empire by [the queen],” Ramsay said.
Ramsay received an OBE for his services to the hospitality industry in the late royal’s 2006 New Year Honors list.
He accepted his medal at an investiture ceremony at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in July 2006.
Ramsay told the BBC at the time that he nearly missed the ceremony because his flight from London to Scotland was delayed.
He also joked that he “didn’t rib” the queen over not being chosen to cook for her 80th birthday.
In 2021, Ramsay said the “best meal” he’s ever cooked was one he prepared for the late Princess Diana when he was a chef at the London restaurant Aubergine in the 1990s.
Speaking on the British cooking show Gordon, Gino and Fred Go Greek, the chef said he served Diana — who died in August 1997 — an appetizer of pressed leek terrine and a entree of sea bass, per The Independent.
Ramsay added Diana was “just beautiful” and “by far was one of the most gracious members of the royal family I’ve ever met.”
