What Happened When Jamie Oliver Offered To Cater The Royal Wedding

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is a man who has managed to shine in several ways in the culinary industry. According to Biography, the talented chef began his love affair with cooking when he was a child, cooking up a storm at his family restaurant. He continued to grow as a chef over the years and worked at many eateries in a bid to gain professional experience. 

His brush with fame started when Oliver gave television a shot and was featured a documentary when he was working at River Café in London. Oliver eventually worked on the show that would make him a household name, "The Naked Chef," in 1999. Oliver basically decoded the art of cooking for his audience and made several recipes a lot more accessible. Of course, he also managed to come up with an entire restaurant empire somewhere along the way, and wrote several cookbooks for his fans.

Despite being as popular and well-known as he is, Oliver hasn't always been appreciated. As Insider reports, the chef once revealed in an interview that he offered to curate the menu for the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018, but was snubbed. Ouch.

According to Insider, Oliver basically never even got a formal response when he expressed interest in catering for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's grand nuptials in 2018. As Independent reported, he told Channel 4 that he would have been comfortable with offering his services for free for the special occasion. Oliver said, "I did actually write and say if they want the food sorted I would bring the best of British and American chefs together to do the catering." Whatever it was that the world-renowned chef was offering, apparently it wasn't enough.

What could've gone wrong? Oliver's best guess is that royal protocol can be a bit too tricky to work with and that chefs like him were perhaps "a bit renegade" for the job. People reported that the Royals eventually zeroed down on royal chef Mark Flanagan to overlook the event and work with a team of 25 chefs to come up with numerous delicious food options at the wedding.