The British royal family may seem an elusive bunch, but not so for chef Darren McGrady. The former royal chef spent 15 years doling out breakfast, lunch and dinner (as well as a slew of separate feasts) to Queen Elizabeth II and her family. He was given great insight into their eating preferences – from the mundane to the weird and whacky, which he recently revealed to Marie Claire US.

 The Queen has Kellogg’s for breakfast
“Breakfast was very simple for Her Majesty. Some Kellogg’s cereal from a plastic container, which she’d serve herself. And some Darjeeling tea.”

She is a chocoholic
“The Queen loves to eat any food from the estate—so game birds, pheasants, grouse, partridge—she loves those to be on the menu. But of course, she loves chocolate. That was her favourite, and it has to be dark chocolate. The darker the chocolate, the better.”

But refuses to eat garlic
“The queen would never have garlic on the menu. She hated the smell of it, she hated the taste of it.”

She is not fussy with her dinnerware
“People always say, ‘Oh, the Queen must eat off gold plates with gold knives and forks.’ Yes, sometimes…but at Balmoral she’d eat fruit from a plastic yellow tupperware container.”

Yet she also chooses to sometimes indulge with a diamond-encrusted plate
“It was a marble dish with three gold horses. The dish was encrusted in diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. Thirty-something years ago it was valued at 500,000 pounds.”

And let’s not forget the daily menu (she is the Queen after all)
“At Buckingham Palace, we’d do a menu book that we’d send up to the Queen and she could choose the dishes she wanted. The book would come back to the kitchen and we’d prepare them. The Queen’s menus are done three or more days ahead and she sticks with them religiously.”