Tom Parker Bowles On Queen Camilla’s Cooking, Loving Pilates & Launching A Cordial Brand

Food was always a big part of family life for Tom Parker Bowles, son of Queen Camilla. His mother is a keen cook, he tells us, and would rustle up roast chicken, salads and stews, while his father’s gardening background meant they learnt about seasonal eating from a young age. So it makes sense that he went on to become a food writer and restaurant critic, penning books about everything from his year-long odyssey in search of culinary extremes to a historical cookbook that delves into 200 years of British royal food. 

But for his latest venture, he’s dipping his toe into the drinks sphere, launching a premium cordial brand called Christopher’s alongside longtime friend Jolyon Fenwick. Designed in part as a response to changing attitudes surrounding alcohol – including Parker Bowles’ personal efforts to cut down – the cordial comes in three flavours, using pure fruit juice and organic botanicals. Its founders hope it will become the go-to soft drink for households across the country – and the Queen is already a fan. He tells us more below.

Where did the idea for Christopher’s come from?

About a year ago, my friend Jolyon said, come for a drink at the pub, I’ve got an idea. He said, look, we’ve grown up on Robinsons and squash. But so many of his friends who didn’t drink or were cutting down on drinking were bored of being offered still water, sparkling water or elderflower – you find that at every single wedding and party. And so we thought we wanted to make grown up cordials. He’d already mapped out the beautiful bottle designs, influenced by William Morris. And lo and behold, a couple of weeks ago we launched it to the world. We’ve worked together closely for a year, but it was his idea, I just joined in. This was an attempt to create a new thing on the market. Like all of us – well, certainly people my age – I’m drinking less and less. I can’t cane it like I used to, it hurts a lot more.

How important is the health factor?

Obviously it’s got sugar in, but it’s natural cane sugar, and I think it’s important that it’s using fresh juice rather than concentrate. And I like the idea of using gooseberries and supporting British farmers, that’s really important to me, as someone who has banged on about supporting our brilliant farmers. It’s a lot lower in sugar than other different ones, so yes nutrition and health is really important now, but I think taste came first. And if you have acidity, you can get away with less sugar. I’m obsessed with acidity, and getting that right amount of acidity, and that’s what it does.

Have Queen Camilla and King Charles tried it?

I couldn’t speak for the King, but my mother loves the lemon and redcurrant one. It was very hot during Ascot – she doesn’t drink in the day, and hardly drinks at night – and that, she said, kept her going. And it’s genuine, you know. Obviously she’d support anything I do, she’s a very good and supportive mother, but the key was she ordered again. She’s a fan, which is pretty cool. She’s quite to the point, if she didn’t like it I certainly wouldn’t say she did. 

 

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Will it be available in restaurants?

It is, at the moment it’s exclusive to Claridge’s for a month. And then it’s starting in Fortnum’s in a week or so, it’s in Daylesford. Obviously it is expensive [£11.50 a bottle] but you get 12 to 16 glasses out of it. It’s not like Seedlip or those refined non-alcoholic drinks brands which cost £30. This is very much a cordial, which we have a long tradition with – I used to make elderflower and rhubarb cordial at home. We had Ribena too, but we weren’t allowed to drink it all day.

Was food a big part of your childhood?

Massively, we grew up in Wiltshire and London. I’m a chilli freak now, but we didn’t have spice – there might have been Tabasco on a Bloody Mary or a dusty old tin of curry powder that was used to make disgusting coronation chicken, but that was about it. We used to go on holiday every year with our grandparents to Ischia, and my grandmother would take us to Italian restaurants in London, so we knew about Italian food.

My mother was a good cook, my father is a gardener, so we’d know about the seasons without knowing about them – there’d be asparagus in May and then peas and broad beans and strawberries, so that gave us a really good grounding. Plus he shot so he’d have game in season, not that we liked that when we were young. But obviously what my sister and I wanted to do was go off to Sainsbury’s in Chippenham and get white bread and Coca Cola, we didn’t care if it came from the butcher or if the chicken was organic. So it was ironic that everything we talk about now – the local, the seasonal, the regenerative, things that are hugely important – meant very little to us. My mother cooked roast chicken and stews in winter, salads and fish, Dover sole or plaice or haddock, it was a very traditional English food upbringing. 

Then I went to prep school in Oxford, and the food was appalling, and that’s what subconsciously set me on the road to a life in food, in that it was so disgusting, I was so offended, that it turned hunger into greed.

Do you enjoy cooking yourself?

I love cooking, I find it very relaxing. I really love Thai and Mexican food. We’ll have stir fries or Thai soups, or now it’s BBQ season I get excited by the Big Green Egg, I love cooking over coals and smoking stuff – ribs, brisket, steaks and butterflied leg of lamb. Then lunch (if I’m trying to be healthy) will be lentils with a poached egg or tinned sardines with onions and chillies. 

When you’re not drinking Christopher’s, what’s your drink of choice?

I love a Bloody Mary, not with horseradish – unacceptable. I do tend to drink rather too much rosé, and it’s always Leoube. Then I love a really good Claret, and I do like tequila and mezcal, so a classic margarita is very good indeed as well. 

What are your favourite London restaurants?

It depends on the hour of the day. Sometimes I crave Cantonese and dim sum, so I’ll go to Min Jiang on Kensington High Street. Other times it’s Italian so it will be the River Cafe or Riva in Barnes. I love The Park, Jeremy King’s new restaurant. I love Josephine on Fulham Road, Bouchon Rachine in Shoreditch, Santiago Lastra’s place [Kol] and Santo Remedio. Then St John, Wiltons and Bellamy’s, it just goes on and on. 

I love restaurants. I’m just as happy having a wonderful regional Pakistani thing somewhere in Wembley – I don’t really like posh tasting menus. Give me big flavours. We’re very lucky in London, but eating out is a real treat, so I realise how lucky I am to do what I do. I still pinch myself 25 years on. 

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What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Buckingham Palace?

I haven’t really eaten many meals there, I don’t go to state banquets. At the Coronation, my sister and I just sat there doing nothing, just watching, we were worried for our mother and for the King. My boys, we were just desperate they didn’t pick their nose. So there was a delicious lunch at Buckingham Palace with everyone there. Everyone was so relieved it had gone well and it was over and everyone was happy. I can’t really remember what the food was, I hadn’t drunk for about a month and I definitely tucked into the booze, which was delicious. And I seem to remember there was some wonderful langoustine thing.

Because my mother and the King live in London at Clarence House, you don’t tend to eat at Buckingham Palace. But Mark Flanagan, the executive chef there, is an amazing cook, and he’s got an amazing team. You forget they’re not just cooking for the royal family, they’re cooking for the whole household which is 1,000 people. So it’s a hell of a job. But yes, the food everywhere is very good. 

Who is your food idol?

There’s a couple of writers, there’s Jane Grigson. In terms of chefs, it would be those sort of masters, you know, Marco Pierre White, I love Angela Hartnett, Jason Atherton, the wonderful Claudia Roden. And then nearer my age, Diana Henry, Nigel Slater. I’m great friends with Giles Coren and Grace Dent. I’m a geek – I collect books, I read about food, I think about food. I write about food. That’s my life, it’s not a bad life to be in.

How do you live a life in balance?

You can’t work all the time, you certainly can’t play all the time. I try not to booze three or four nights a week – difficult when it’s hot. Nowadays, for me luxury is genuinely a blank diary. Luxury is waking up having gone to bed at 10pm and getting up at 7am and going to do this ghastly thing I do called Reshape at the gym, which basically involves lots of much younger people than me looking absolutely lean and lovely and me sweaty. I do Pilates as well, and I never thought I’d be the person doing this. I like to start earlyish to do one of those sessions, and I’m set up for the day. Balance is so important in everything – in cooking, in life. Balance, balance, balance.

Find out more and shop at christopherscordials.com