Stanley Tucci to design menu for King’s soirée

Meal in celebration of Anglo-Italian relations to be held at Highgrove in the new year

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The King has personally requested Stanley Tucci’s involvement in a private dinner arranged to celebrate Anglo-Italian relations.
Tucci revealed he was designing the menu for the soirée, due to be held in the new year, having become acquainted with the monarch after they met at a Prince’s Trust event last May.
The actor described the dinner, to be held at the King’s Highgrove home in Gloucestershire, as “a commuting of our two cultures”.
“Now, OK, I won’t actually be in the kitchen, cooking for him,” Tucci, 64, told The Telegraph.
“But the Italian ambassador came to me and said, ‘I want to do a meal, and Charles would like you to participate’, so I’ve been coming up with the menu.”
The theme is “slow food and fashion”, two areas central to the work of the King’s Foundation, which uses its base at Highgrove to offer training programmes and workshops in heritage and craft skills, such as embroidery, that the monarch fears are at risk of being lost to future generations.
Roast pork, kale and squash, “all of that nice, wintry, heavier stuff”, are to feature on the menu, according to Tucci, as he praised the King, 76, for being “ahead of his time” in recognising the importance of eating seasonally.
The actor promised that the meal would “showcase all of this incredible British produce,” adding: “Charles was into that way before anyone else, he was way ahead of his time.”
He has enlisted the services of Calabrian chef Francesco Mazzei, who catered his own wedding to literary agent Felicity Blunt, the sister of actress Emily Blunt, in 2012.
Mazzei, once described as “arguably one of the world’s greatest Italian chefs”, describes his food as “Mamma’s cooking with a chef’s hands” and is currently in residency at Villa Corinthia, Corinthia Palace, in Malta.
The Anglo-Italian dinner comes ahead of a planned state visit to Italy next year as the King and Queen return to a “full programme” of overseas tours.
The visit, much like last year’s official trips to Germany and France, will be made on behalf of the Foreign Office in order to help boost relations post-Brexit.
Tucci met the King at a Buckingham Palace reception held last May for Prince’s Trust award winners and celebrity supporters.
While he came to prominence as an actor in hit films such as Big Night and The Devil Wears Prada, he has also become known for his love of food, regularly sharing recipes and cooking tips with his five million followers on Instagram.
He published his first cookbook in 2012, while his television show, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, took him from Milan to Venice on the trail of local delicacies.
The King and Queen last went to Italy in 2017, when they spent six days in Florence, Rome, Naples and the Vatican.
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