07/18/2026
🔗 https://www.peoplenewspapers.com/business/2026/07/savoy-trained-chef-gives-park-cities-preston-hollow-diners-the-royal-treatment/
London Savoy Hotel-trained chef Darren McGrady knows his way around a royal palace or two and is equally familiar with some of the finer homes in the Park Cities and Preston Hollow.
Following the celebrated wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the young culinarian dreamed of being a royal chef, so he wrote a letter to the Queen.
“Two weeks later, I had an interview,” he said, smiling. “Not long after that, I was rattling pans in the royal kitchens.”
He spent the next 11 years traveling around the world with the Queen and cooking for her at her residences, Windsor Castle and Balmoral Castle, and on Her Majesty’s Yacht Brittania.
“The Queen had 20 chefs,” he explained, “and I became that familiar face in the kitchen to Princess Diana.”
When she and Prince Charles separated, Diana called McGrady, asking him to be chef at Kensington Palace for her, William, and Harry. In the film Spencer (2021), Kristen Stewart played Diana, while Sean Harris from Mission: Impossible played Darren McGrady.
“In the opening scene, when the Princess gets out of the car and says, ‘Hello, Darren,’ I get goosebumps watching that, still,” he admitted.
Continue reading:
https://www.peoplenewspapers.com/business/2026/07/savoy-trained-chef-gives-park-cities-preston-hollow-diners-the-royal-treatment/
📷️ Josh Hickman
