By Brendan Rees
It’s not every day you get to serve royalty but Rob Boyle, of Rob’s British Butchery may have done just that.
The flamboyant Dandenong foodie believes his haggis – a popular English savoury pudding containing sheep’s heart, liver, lungs with toasted oatmeal, and spices – was served up to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Government House.
But Mr Boyle can’t be “100 per cent sure” if his haggis actually reached the plates of Prince Harry and Meghan during the luncheon on Wednesday 19 October.
“We got a phone call a couple of days ago,” Mr Boyle said. “They said ‘Can you get me 80 kilo of haggis?’ I said ‘Who’s it for?’ They said ‘We can’t say. We look after all the big functions in the city’.”
“I said “It’s not for Harry and Meghan is it? And he said ‘As I say I can’t say.’”
However, Mr Boyle said an inside source told him his haggis had been used at a function at Government House.
Mr Boyle conceded the 80kg of haggis was “the biggest one I’ve ever done in one hit” which could could feed up to 600 people.
“There is no other live function in the city that’s going to feed that many,” he added.
“We’re not 100 per cent sure because it hasn’t come from the official source but you can put two-and-two together.”
He said haggis was usually served as an entrée “with a little bit of neeps and tatties which is your mashed potato and mashed turnips.”
“We know the royals like their haggis; they’re very traditionalist with things like that.”
Mr Boyle called 3AW’s Rumour File, one of Melbourne’s most popular radio segments, to say Prince Harry and Meghan sat down to his haggis at Government House.
“My source confirmed it but it didn’t come from an official source, just somebody in the business,” he said.
After working as a butcher for 27 years in Dandenong, Mr Boyle says this one topped the honour board.
“It makes you feel proud that people respect the product enough to use me and trust me – it makes it all worthwhile.”
