Camilla's Son Tom Parker Bowles Says Christmas in Britain Is About James Bond and "Drinking Too Much"
Tom Parker Bowles is very, very charming. The 44-year-old food writer is prone to bouts of self-effacing humor, always delivered with a wry, near-mischievous smile. He seems to enjoy skirting the line, allowing himself to condemn the "awful right-wing way" the U.K. is heading, and later assuring his publicist that he "won't do that with the Post."
The way he tells it, Parker Bowles began writing about food because he was "really shit at every job I did after university," and finally stumbled into something that clicked. A few books—plus some regular gigs at the Daily Mail and Esquire's British edition—later, and here he is.
It would be all too easy to forget that when Parker Bowles recalls his mother swearing as she kicked the turkey into the oven for Christmas, that it is in fact Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall to whom he is referring. And his "stepdad"? Yes, that's England's future king, His Royal Highness Prince Charles.
Parker Bowles will gracefully answer questions about his family, but it is (unsurprisingly) not what he most enjoys discussing. When he gets passionate, it's about food: his favorite hole-in-the-wall Thai places in London ("Jonathan Gold used to say, 'The best restaurant you'll find is always 10 minutes further than you think it's going to be, and it's always going to be between the dry cleaner and the porn store"), and what actual good English cuisine consists of. Parker Bowles relishes revisiting his favorites culinary memories, like ice cream he once had at Fortnum & Mason.
Decades may have passed since he first tasted that ice cream, but his relationship with Fortnum & Mason has only grown. Most recently, he's collaborated on two cookbooks with the legendary London grocer, the latter of which, Christmas & Other Winter Feasts, has just been released stateside.
That's what he came to Town & Country to talk about, though he ended up waxing on everything from the sordid history of Christmas to his mother's cooking.
So, I've heard you're not a fan of the Christmas turkey.
[Laughs.] Before the Victorians, before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, we ate beef. And we ate capons, we ate peacocks. Not that I want to eat a peacock or anything else... But modern Christmas was invented by Charles Dickens with A Christmas Carol and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who brought over German traditions, with the Christmas tree.
In the old days way before that, it was this 12-day bacchanalian feast where everyone got twatted. And of course the moment that people had big mines and factories, they didn't want their staff going off for 12 days and getting drunk, so it was pulled down to two days.
Turkey, I respect turkey. The thing is I find, I'd much rather have a roast with beef, and that's just as traditional as having a turkey.
Did you have turkey as a child at Christmas?
[I remember] my mother and aunt waking up and kicking a turkey into an Aga, which is a sort of always-on English cooking thing that you have in the country. They always made a big deal of it, and sweating away and pushing it and swearing at six o'clock in the morning.
But I personally prefer beef, and I feel a bit guilty with my children that they've never had turkey for Christmas. I thought I deprived them somewhat of something very traditional. But yes, most people have turkey and there are very good turkeys, but give me beef any day.
Do you have other favorite dishes to make for Christmas, alongside the beef?
I think the best thing about Christmas is not the main bit, it's the bits around it. So you have chipolatas, which are small sausages wrapped in bacon. You have Brussels sprouts. Basically the Turkey is just the ballast, really, to put everything out around it.
But for me, the thing about Christmas is, it doesn't matter what religion you are, where you come from, it's about bringing family and friends together, sitting around the table and—through these difficult and tumultuous times—breaking bread and drinking wine together. This book is very much my philosophy of "food brings people together."
Can you elaborate on that?
I find that you can learn more about other cultures through food than you can through history. You can get straight to the heart of the culture. Even if I don't speak Arabic or Cantonese or very bad Spanish, you can still rub your tummy and smile and say "yum," and people will like you immediately. It cuts through all the crap basically, food.
What else can people expect from the book?
You can go back 312 years for Fortnum's, and say look, this fed kings and emperors and princes and Churchills and Wellingtons and the rest of it, but this is a modern cookbook. It's a cookbook that one can use, I hope. I mean the recipes are by the chefs at Fortnum's, they're not mine. But you hope it's a recipe book that will become battered and beaten and well-used.
You have everything. There's curries and poutines. It's fondues, it's Swiss. So yes, it's not a tub-thumpingly, flag-wavingly "look at British food" way.
You obviously have a love for international cuisines and cultures. Is that what drew you to pursue a career as a food writer?
I don't know. I was really shit at every job I did after university and was fired most of the time. I mean food's the one universal experience apart from death. You can be celibate and you can not drink and you can not pay your taxes, but everyone has to eat. Now, you might not like food, but I like that language of food. And what drew it to me is chefs, I love chefs. And it's a world still where you can have a five-hour lunch, in a world where five-hour lunches don't exist anymore.
What about Christmas? Do you have a strong connection to the holiday?
There was something about being very young—six, seven, eight—and going to London. Usually, because I'd go to lunch with my grandmother, and you'd be dressed in your sort of London best, you know? And you'd go and look at the windows at Fortnum's or Selfridges or Harrods.
Going to Fortnum's as a child was just like going into Aladdin's cave. It was exhausting and it smelled wonderful and had all these displays, and it felt like the very essence of Christmas.
And it really was a treat when you'd go in and there'd be the ice cream parlor. It was the first place in the ’50s where you'd have American ice cream—England was on its knees after the war, after rationing. You know, this is what my parents would tell me; it was very exotic, even then.
Even now, we all drive down to be together. My mother's up with my stepfather, and she comes down on Christmas Day straight after the Queen's speech. So it's very much a family thing.
Are there any particular British traditions you remember taking part in?
I suppose you have different traditions in Germany or in Italy or in France or in Poland, but the British tradition is basically drinking too much. Falling asleep watching James Bond in the afternoon; eating too much chocolate.
Do you think British food is unfairly maligned?
I do, I wrote a whole book on this. The problem is, if you come as a tourist, you go to some shite tourist hole and you have bangers and mash, or roast beef made with awfully cheap beef. Overcooked, everything's overcooked. The vegetables are cooked into a mush. Roast potatoes are just a joke. Ingredients are bad.
And we have this institutionalized private school food, which is basically food made without love. And you know, the Victorians felt that you weren't allowed to indulge. I think a lot of factors between rationing and all these things came in, and we sort of put up with rubbish food.
But really, British foods is about good ingredients. So the best salmon, smoked salmon or the best steak, simple stuff...
Also, taking on all these influences, [like with] chicken tikka masala. Britain's always been a country of immigration, and it's made great by immigration, and we should relish and embrace our immigrants. Not this awful right-wing way we're going.
Did your mom make good British food?
I remember roast chicken. It was always a really good roast chicken. Rub it with butter, put a lemon up his ass. Or his cavity. Yeah, she was good about that, and she was brilliant at that sort of very traditional English stuff. Cooking fish, cooking meats. She cooked for us, she was our mother. My dad was in the Army and traveled a lot. He was there the weekends, but she was very much the traditional cook. There was always food and it was always good.
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