Giada De Laurentiis Had A Lot To Say After Cooking For Prince William And Kate Middleton

De Laurentiis is a very successful celebrity chef, there’s no doubt about it. Everyday Italian, the TV cookery show that shot her to fame, won her an Emmy award for Best Lifestyle Host in 2008. And come 2014 she became the first woman ever to have her own eatery on the Las Vegas Strip.

So you can see why she was a good candidate to cook for royalty. And this was a big event. It was a charity polo match and luncheon at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racket Club, with some 3,500 people attending. That would be a daunting prospect even if some of them weren’t royalty.

And royal polo matches so happen to be a very big deal as well. They take place every year and are used to raise money for various charities. Famous people turn up in expensive dresses and watch royal celebrities such as Prince William play the sport, and just one event can raise millions for good causes.

De Laurentiis knew from the beginning that she had a lot of work to do. She had to order, among other things, 100lb of pasta, no fewer than 1,500 shrimp and roughly 9,000 cookies for the polo match guests. These were driven to the Santa Barbara grounds in refrigerated trucks, since it was the middle of summer. And then, of course, she had to do the actual cooking.

And if that wasn’t enough, Prince William and Kate Middleton were essentially last-minute additions to De Laurentiis’ day. She had accepted the event before she had any idea the royal pair would be the guests of honor. De Laurentiis had watched the royal wedding on TV, but like most of us she’d never actually met them before.

The event took place in 2011 meaning Prince William and Kate were still newlyweds at that point. De Laurentiis recalled to the media at the time that she’d felt a connection to the couple not just because she’d watched the wedding, but because she’d watched it with her three-year-old daughter, who was only just realizing princes and princesses actually existed.

De Laurentiis did a few interviews before the event where she talked about how thrilled she was. She told the Today show in June 2011, “I had no idea the royal couple would be attending. And when I finally found out it was actually kind of a bummer.  I couldn’t tell anyone — I had to keep it hush-hush until their California itinerary was released!”

But as the date of the polo match grew closer she was able to tell her friends, who totally “freaked out” about it. De Laurentiis said, “They couldn’t believe I didn’t tell them. Everyone tells you that they would have kept the secret. But they are all extremely ecstatic for me.” 

De Laurentiis was asked how she ended up being the one chosen to cook for the royal couple, and she wasn’t actually sure. She joked, “I believe that everything happens through a golf game. Someone who plays golf with someone who plays golf with someone threw my name in the pot!” Pun not intended?

That same month De Laurentiis also talked to the Epicurious blog about her plans for the royals. She told them at a Target event to promote her line of cookware, “The whole idea behind the menu is just to give them an understanding about what California cuisine is: fresh, organic ingredients. Very colorful.”

She went on, “We’re going to be outside, and July is hot in Santa Barbara in the sun, so you want to keep it light, but you want to keep it colorful. And I don’t want them to go away feeling like they just ate two little leaves of lettuce. I want them to feel satisfied but not heavy.”

One of the things she’d planned to cook for the royals was her Pea Pesto Crostini, which appears in her book Giada at Home. That was a fairly simple dish consisting of peas and some Italian staples: tomatoes, garlic, Parmesan cheese, and ciabatta bread. De Laurentiis had absolutely sung its praises in her cookbook.

De Laurentiis wrote in that 2010 volume, “If you’re not a big fan of peas, at least give this a try. I think it’s going to be your new favorite thing. I can’t resist eating it straight out of the bowl.” She was clearly hoping that William and Kate would feel the same way.

That wasn’t all the royals had been due to get, of course. According to the Today show’s interview with the excited chef, she’d also planned to serve “California chopped salad with a mix of grilled lettuces, grilled corn, grilled shrimp, zucchini and crispy tortillas in a light lemon dressing,” which sounded absolutely delicious.

William and his new wife would also get the California-themed dishes of “Chicken Milanese, which features breaded chicken cutlets in a creamy tomato fennel sauce,” and mini lasagnes with sweetcorn in them. And those were just the savory dishes; De Laurentiis also had to consider what to serve for dessert.

De Laurentiis told the Epicurious blog, “And of course there will be a little chocolate, since Prince William is a huge chocolate fan. The way that I am.” In fact, as per Hello! magazine, William is such a big fan of chocolate that he had a special second wedding cake made out of the stuff when he married Kate.

De Laurentiis told the Today show that she was “overwhelmingly excited” to achieve the “dream come true” of royals eating her food. She wasn’t sure if she would actually get to meet Kate and William, she said, but she very much wanted to “catch a glimpse of their reactions as they are tasting my food.”

But naturally she had also been anxious about how the event would go. She told Today, “I’m just nervous about new people tasting my food. Any chef feels that way when people who aren’t in their circle eat their food for the first time — you always cringe until the first bite happens.”

But luckily, as it turned out, De Laurentiis had no reason to cringe. A few days after the event went off without a hitch, she talked to the Today show about it in July 2011. She said, “I can honestly say that besides my wedding and the birth of my daughter, Saturday probably was the most exciting day of my life.”

De Laurentiis had to be very careful when serving the food. She even switched from high heels to flats to reduce the risk of tripping. She said, “I was just so honored when I was asked to serve the main course to them, and I thought, I don’t know, I’m going to be a bumbling idiot.”

But she needn’t have worried about that. As soon as she encountered William and Kate, they not only stuck around to talk to her, they were lovely. De Laurentiis said, “It was actually the weirdest thing because it felt like I was chatting with some friends, even though I know they’re not friends.”

William and Kate had even taken the time to learn about De Laurentiis’ personal life. She told the Today show, “We talked about food, but what really touched my heart was when we chatted about Jade, my daughter, they asked about her and that just kind of threw me off.”

And not only did that sweet conversation happen, but William even asked her for cooking advice! De Laurentiis revealed that many years later in a 2017 interview with website Popsugar. She said that William’s staff had told her before the event that the prince had tried to make lasagna for Kate once, but the attempt had been “unsuccessful.”

De Laurentiis said, “I was hoping that if they picked me, somehow I would give him a tip when we met about what makes a great lasagna.” And she did! She said, “I remember meeting him and he told me the exact same story and asked me what was the key to a great lasagna.”

Asked what she told William about the pasta dish, De Laurentiis said, “You’ve got to make sure that you have enough sauce to get a nice crust on top and you’ve got to let it sit before you cut into it. It has got to set, otherwise it’ll just be a pool of mess.” Good advice!

Of course, De Laurentiis was far from the first chef to cook for Prince William and Kate in 2011. The royal wedding was also a nerve-racking undertaking for those involved. The man who made William’s aforementioned chocolate wedding cake, celebrated chocolatier Barry Colenso, spoke to Hello! about it in 2015.

He remembered that making the cake “was a tough task, as all of the decorations and flowers were based on different concepts which had to be approved by the Palace.” What’s more,  Colenso added, “Once approved, each white chocolate flower took over six hours to make by hand. The techniques used were completely revolutionary.”

And Colenso got to meet a royal as well. Asked, “Did William or Kate come to visit you while you were making their wedding cake?” he said, “William did right at the very end and it was a very humbling experience. He is so kind and grateful. It was a very special day.”

Colenso had also made cakes for, and met, both the Queen Mother and the Queen herself. He told the magazine, “Both the Queen and the Queen Mother were amazing individuals. I made the Queen Mother’s 85th birthday cake and presented it to her on the stage of the Drury Lane Theatre.”

He remembered that that one was “a rich chocolate cake, and I topped it with the logo from the musical 42nd Street.” And as for the monarch, “The cake for the Queen was a very grand cake I made on behalf of Lord Porchester. It had a horse on top and I was asked to present it to her. I will never forget that day.”

Other well-established chefs have become acquainted with royal family members over the years, too. A chef called John Williams, who is Executive Chef at The Ritz, spoke to the Daily Mail newspaper in 2016 about his work and what the royals were usually like around the staff members who provide their food for them.

Williams told the outlet, “The best person I’ve ever cooked for is without a doubt the Queen. I made a four-course meal centered around lamb for her 80th birthday at The Ritz and it was possibly the most stressful experience of my life. People might say celebrities are stressful to cook for, but no one comes with as much pressure as the Queen.”

He went on, “You need perfection — on that sort of occasion, we have to make sure everything will go to plan so we rehearse the whole event several times.” But the Queen wasn’t even the only royal for whom he’d cooked: he’d also encountered Prince Charles, William, Kate and Harry. And he had a favorite.

Williams told the Daily Mail, “I love cooking for the Prince of Wales. He’s been in to The Ritz many times. He has a fantastic palate, did you know? I once cooked something for him and he was able to break down the entire sauce and understand it structurally — naming the ingredients in the sauce exactly. Lots of chefs couldn’t do that!”

De Laurentiis luckily didn’t have to worry too much about security at the charity polo match, but others who have served the royals have had to undergo rigorous security measures before the food can get anywhere near their guests. At the big royal banquets, things can get pretty intense.

Former royal chef Graham Tinsley spoke to Hello! in 2021 about the amount of work which goes into keeping the royal food safe. He said, “For higher-caliber banquets, we [were] required to put all our food, containers, knives and kitchen equipment through an X-ray machine, while motorcycles then drove us into the castle.”

With all that to worry about, wouldn’t it make sense for the royals to just cook for themselves? Well, yes… but as per Marie Claire magazine, the Queen reportedly only ever makes one meal for herself every day, and that’s breakfast. There’s not a lot involved in that: she just has to get cereal from a plastic container.

Kate Middleton, on the other hand, does cook for herself lots! According to royal correspondent Katie Nicholl, writing for Vanity Fair magazine in 2012, Kate’s “hobby” is “cooking William’s favorite supper, roast chicken.” Perhaps that’s why she, unlike her husband, didn’t have to ask De Laurentiis for advice.

It’s been many years now since De Laurentiis cooked for the royals, but she still remembers it fondly. She told the website Insider in 2019, “I’m not usually starstruck, but I’ll admit I was pretty anxious meeting them. It was nerve-wracking cooking a meal for actual royalty, but I kept reminding myself that I was in my element.”