From start to finish it took the King of Siam, Chulalongkorn the Great, 295 days to complete his grand tour of Europe in 1897. And all the way he was wined and dined by Emperors, Kings, Queens and Presidents of 14 countries.

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The King’s goal was to charm his way through Europe in an attempt to preserve Siam’s independence. His country was teetering on being colonised as Europe’s major powers competed against each other in their rush for new territories, particularly in Asia. And he did charm.

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The King and his suite left Bangkok in early April aboard the royal yacht, the Maha Chakri. When it reached Venice five weeks later on 14th May and the King was rowed ashore in a Gondola, Chulalongkorn became the first Siamese monarch to set foot in Europe.

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His receptions were grand and there was a giddy excitement and curiosity at the arrival of an oriental monarch. At the Vatican, the Pope would grant the first ever audience to a non-Christian head of state; and Queen Victoria, who was of out of London, gave Chulalongkorn the run of Buckingham Palace for a few nights in her absence.

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The King had arrived at Portsmouth from Germany on 30 July. Queen Victoria’s grandson, the Duke of York [and future King George V) went aboard Chulalongkorn’s royal yacht to welcome the visiting monarch. “Luncheon was served under an awning on the upper deck of the Maha Chakri”, reported The Times.  

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In his diary the Duke of York briefly jotted: “At 12.0 went out to Spithead in steam launch to meet the King of Siam on bd his yacht. She then came alongside jetty, I lunched with him and he left for London by special train at 3.15”.

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When the King’s train drew into London’s Victoria Station the band boomed the Siamese National Anthem, with the Duke of Cambridge at the ready to accompany Chulalongkorn in open carriages to Buckingham Palace. The Times described the royal visitor as “a vigorous well-knit man in early middle life”.

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With Buckingham Palace placed at his disposal for several nights, Chulalongkorn ventured out to London’s West End theatre scene to attend a performance of The Geisha. The following morning Queen Victoria’s personal coachman was at the ready to take Chulalongkorn to Harrow where his son Prince Purachatra was a boarder. There – in a so stereotypically English gesture - the King took tea in the headmaster’s garden and watched a cricket match between schoolhouses, before returning to Buckingham Palace for dinner.

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The menu on this website is from the dinner at Buckingham Palace that night for King Chulalongkorn and his suite. Also in attendance was the Crown Prince of Siam who was then studying at Sandhurst’s Royal Military College; and another son Prince Chira, who had been accompanying the King of the voyage from Bangkok.

 

The menu card is embossed with Queen Victoria’s cypher “VRI” as she was the host, despite her being away on the Isle of Wight. The menu-card is also titled “The Royal Dinner” as opposed to “Her Majesty’s Dinner” to signify it is for the King of Siam. 

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The design of the menu card is also unique to 1897, as it was especially for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee which she had celebrated a month earlier.

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The dinner started with a choice between oxtail consommé or cream of cauliflower soup, before offering the royal Siamese guests a very Victorian-era dish of chicken medallions smothered in creamed oysters and topped with shredded celery: Medallions à la Métropole.

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Elaborate vol-au-vents were served (Vol au vent à la Financière). These puff-pastry shells were filled with calves’ sweetbreads that had been studded with matchstick shaped slices of truffle and beef-tongue before being topped with poached chicken quenelles and cockscombs along with mushrooms and truffles sautéed with a splash of Madeira, and then all bound in an Espagnole sauce.​ For dessert came orange pudding and pistachio mousse.

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It would be another four days before King Chulalongkorn met Queen Victoria in person. On 4th August the Duke of York wrote he and his father the Prince of Wales “took him [Chulalongkorn] to Osborne where Grandmama received him. A large lunch at 2.0 in Indian Room”. The King of the Belgians, Léopold II, also joined for lunch.

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“The King was very friendly”, recalled Queen Victoria in her journal, “and said how pleased he was to see me. We lunched in the Durbar Room, & the Band of the Scottish Rifles played outside. It was a big luncheon, including all the suites”.

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Although the King was fluent in English, his use of words gave Queen Victoria a chuckle. “I could hardly help laughing when he said to me ‘Your Majesty has a very nice little house here’”, she wrote the following day.

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Two months earlier, as a part of his Grand Tour of Europe, the King of Siam was a guest of King Umberto and Queen Margherita of Italy. On 3rd June he stayed the night at the Quirinal Palace with a State Banquet that evening. The following morning the two Kings visited the Pantheon, and returned to the palace for lunch ahead of Chulalongkorn’s afternoon visit to Pope Leo XIII.

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The menu for the lunch at the Quirinal Palace appears on this webpage and is embossed with the dual personal monogram of the Italian King and Queen.

 

Consommé poured around a timbale of saffron and tomatoe rice was served before platters of spiny lobsters appeared ahead of Chateaubriands à la Bordelaise: grilled tournedos topped with bone marrow and a reduction of red wine and shallots.

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After lunch the Queen of Italy removed an onyx and diamond bracelet she had been wearing and gave it her husband to then present to Chulalongkorn, as a gift to take home to his Queen Consort, Saovabha.

Although both the Quirinal and Buckingham Palace menus are written in French, this caused no difficulty for the King of Siam. His personal menus back home were also composed in French and regularly featured Cuisine Classique intermingled with Thai dishes.