A banquet hosted by the Queen is, as you'd expect, a grand affair.
But with so many VIPs in one room, it's no surprise that security protocols are extremely strict.
Graham Tinsley, a former royal chef and manager of the Welsh Culinary Team, shared some of the quirks and protocols associated with catering for the royal family that he experienced firsthand, including one that takes place at banquets.
He explained that when catering for royal engagements in Wales, a satellite kitchen would be set up in the grounds of Cardiff or Caerphilly Castle, then food would be transferred into the banquet on foot.
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"For higher calibre banquets, we're required to put all our food, containers, knives and kitchen equipment through an X-ray machine whilst motorcycles then drove us into the castle," he told HELLO.
He also revealed that if they were catering for a Heads of State banquet that "all the catering staff have to meet at a police station and get a motorcycle ride into Cardiff Castle."
These extreme measures were only in place when heads of state were in attendance, he explained.
He said: "If we were just cooking for the Royal Family, we weren’t always aware of the security. It only changed if there were heads of state coming over, and then the security was really, really tight."
And when the Queen isn't hosting a banquet or company, she's a lot more laidback, says former Buckingham Palace chef Darren McGrady.
Darren who cooked for the Monarch for 15 years, exposed some of her eating habits in a chat with Marie Claire, where he said: "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."
He also revealed how the kitchen decides what food she'll be eating.
"The chef does three days’ menus and that gives us enough time to get all the produce in and prepare it. When the menu book goes up to the Queen she puts a line through all the dishes she doesn’t want.
"If she’s out for dinner she’ll put a line through the page and if she has a guest coming she’ll put two or three, so we know she is entertaining."
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