Inside Meghan’s real kitchen, away from the cameras, is a real cook

MONTECITO, California – Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is already anticipating pushback on her banana pudding.

“I know some people will be upset that I took out the wafers,” she said, crushing Nilla wafers with a rolling pin rather than layering them in with vanilla pudding and sliced bananas. “But I like them crumbled on top.”

On a bright morning at her home in Montecito, California, Meghan roved between the garden, where her husband Prince Harry stopped by the strawberry patch in Birkenstocks to say he was getting on a work call, and the vast, well-worn kitchen where her mother Doria Ragland – graceful in jeans, white T-shirt and silver nose ring – rummaged for breakfast in the double-wide refrigerator.

In the Netflix lifestyle series With Love, Meghan, the American former actress gave the world its first look at the remake of her life from broken royal bride to triumphant domestic goddess.

She and Harry fled Britain and its relentless criticism in 2020 to settle as a family in this safe, sunny, affluent enclave. But the show has brought some of that darkness back to her door.

Like American actress Gwyneth Paltrow, American model Chrissy Teigen and other celebrities who have cooking and lifestyle brands, Meghan does not have professional culinary training.

This visit – the first time a reporter was invited into her kitchen – showed that she is a passionate home cook who knows her way around a vinaigrette, is quick with a lemon zester and deft with a knife. (I was allowed in on the condition that no photographs were taken in, or of, the house, for reasons of privacy and security.)

At 43 and with boundless enthusiasm, she is still figuring out her public identity, while pitching it to a global audience. Her decision to do so may read to some as entrepreneurial, endearing or narcissistic, but you cannot say it is not a big swing.

It is about to get bigger. On April 2, sales went live for As Ever, Meghan’s line of food products priced from US$12 (S$16) to US$15, including baking mixes, honeys and internet-famous jams – which, to her dismay, are labelled “fruit spreads” because of US Food and Drug Administration regulations. They all sold out within an hour, a spokesperson said.

In late March, Meghan announced she would host a new podcast series, Confessions Of A Female Founder, and started a ShopMy channel where fans can buy the clothing and products they see her in on-screen, from head (Lottabody’s Control Me Edge Gel) to toe (CND Shellac).

With Love, Meghan presents her in a series of idyllic scenes (none of which were shot in this kitchen – a nearby house was used as a studio), cooking, crafting and planning tea parties. But anyone who thought that truffle popcorn and balloon arches would be uncontroversial was wrong.

CRITICISM – AND SOME SUPPORT

When the show premiered in early March, the millions who have long felt entitled to critique Meghan as a member of the British royal family were free to judge her as a wife, mother, cook, decorator and hostess.

And many did, calling her saccharine, inauthentic and uninspiring. She was compared with Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm and other influencers riding the tradwife wave, who glamorise old-fashioned “women’s work” like feeding chickens and cooking breakfast, that many women have no desire to return to.

The best episodes frame Meghan as a respectful student of chefs like Alice Waters and Roy Choi.

In others, she is the teacher, demonstrating recipes like pasta salad and entertaining tips to a series of friends, who are charged with showing enthusiasm while she hands them a raw fish or ties a bow on a gift bag of peanut butter-stuffed pretzels. Those episodes came in for the most mockery.

Some criticism was more pointed. Social media posts zeroed in on her Le Creuset pots, claiming they were too expensive for many black women to afford and more ostentatious than traditional cast-iron.

In response, black women began posting photos of their extensive Le Creuset collections online.

Journalist Michele Norris came to Meghan’s defence, asking: “Why is anyone surprised or disturbed that she would have beautiful colour-coordinated cookware? Does anyone drag Ina (Garten) or Martha (Stewart) for their cookware?”

In an interview, she noted that singling Meghan out for not using her “real” kitchen is also illogical.

“Every set is a performative kitchen,” said Norris, who hosts a podcast about cuisine and culture. “I think she manages to present an authentic version of herself within that artificial space. What’s so bad about someone wanting to share their joy?”

“Everybody has somebody or something they want her to be,” said Carla Hall, who was a model before she was a chef, and whose culinary credentials were also questioned when she started her TV career. “There’s no winning that game.”

Which raises a question: Why would someone who has for years endured the worst kind of public attention put herself back under the microscope?

One reason is money. The production deal Meghan and Harry signed with Netflix in 2020 ends in 2025, and most of their other recent efforts – documentaries about polo and Harry’s Invictus Games – flopped. But Netflix is betting on her: The show has already shot a second season, and the company is an investor in As Ever.

And despite the criticism, in the past month, millions of fans have showed up for her.

According to Netflix, With Love, Meghan was in the top 10 in 24 countries in the week after the premiere, with 2.6 million views.

Many of the clothes on Meghan’s ShopMy page sold out within hours or days. Since Jan 1, when she started a fresh Instagram account – she deleted the old one shortly before marrying into the royal family – she has gained 2.7 million followers.

The other reason is personal. “I need to work, and I love to work,” she said, pointing out that until she met Harry, she had not been without a job since she was 13.

With two young children to raise, she said, “this is a way I can connect my home life and my work”. (Prince Archie is five and Princess Lilibet is three; they are sixth and seventh in line to the throne.)

A cook’s progress

When Meghan was growing up in Los Angeles, her mother worked long hours and had little time for home cooking. But Ms Ragland was raised with a strong food tradition.

Her father, Alvin, had roots in Tennessee. “He carried a bottle of Red Rooster hot sauce everywhere he went,” she said.

For her mother Jeanette, as for many black women of her time, cooking and gardening skills were a given. At home, in the Crenshaw neighbourhood, Meghan said, her grandmother grew collard greens and tomatoes in the yard, whipped up hand pies from scratch after dinner, and did nearly all her cooking in one cast-iron skillet.

What may help Meghan stand out in the crowded field of food influencing is her eye for detail.

Calligraphy and gift-wrapping skills she developed to pick up extra money are now put to work in levelling layer cakes and fluffing salads, just so.

She truly cares which direction the radishes are pointing on the charcuterie board, and she really does sometimes transfer takeout food onto serving dishes.

To finish the pudding, she got out the hand mixer to make Chantilly cream – the vanilla-spiked, sweetened whipped cream that would give the dessert its name: Chantilly Lili, after the little redhead who had just arrived home.

Ms Ragland said she still was not convinced that she needed a hand mixer of her own; she has a KitchenAid stand mixer at home in Los Angeles. The duchess rolled her eyes at her mother, as daughters do.

“My mum still has Grandma Jeanette’s cast-iron skillet,” Meghan whispered to me. “That’s what I really want.” NYTIMES