Meghan Markle’s Poverty Letter Under Fire After Contradictory Instagram Post

Meghan Markle's claims of growing up on a $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler in her poverty letter to US politicians have been called into question after a 2013 Instagram post surfaced, revealing that as a schoolgirl, her father, Thomas Markle, regularly took her to one of LA's most famous restaurants where celebrities gobble up $55 steaks.

The Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard is a world away from the cheap Sizzler salad Meghan claims to have been brought up on and is loved by A-listers such as Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, and Keith Richards.

The 2013 Instagram post, which was deleted when Meghan started dating Prince Harry, showed a picture of the restaurant's famous sign above a vintage Mercedes with the caption, “I used to have lunch with my dad here after every tap and ballet class.

Happy.

Thank you.

More please hashtag Musso's hashtag Hollywood.”

The restaurant, opened in 1919 and famed for its grilled meat and fish, also features in many movies, including Quentin Tarantino's most recent movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Menus from the 1990s show that a meal for two at Musso and Frank would cost up to $75, 15 times more than the $5 Sizzler salad she said she lived on.

Meghan is likely to have gone to Musso and Frank over a number of years, as friends at her $16,000-a-year private Immaculate Heart High School said in 2018 that she did dance classes for three to four years in her teens.

Critics have pointed out that she has receipts all over her Instagram contradicting her poverty letter.

One critic wrote, “She went to one of the most expensive schools in Los Angeles, but they couldn't afford to spend more than $5 on a weekend dinner.

I mean, during this time, Thomas was working on a hit TV show and had won an Emmy.

WTH is she talking about?”

Royals experts have already questioned whether Americans will be impressed by her account of how she had to struggle when her estranged father Thomas put her through private school from kindergarten and she now lives in a $14 million L.A. mansion while sitting on a $100 million fortune.

In her letter, the Duchess of Sussex detailed how she had to work at the local frozen yogurt shop from the age of 13 just to make ends meet and, when she was older, to fill up her car.

But critics have pointed out that many families couldn't afford to eat out at all, and that Meghan attended a prestigious private nursery and kindergarten called Little Red Schoolhouse, which starts at $18,800 a year for kindergarten and $22,600 a year for sixth grade, paid for by her father Thomas, who she no longer speaks to.

Meghan's reference to Sizzler has been seized upon on social media, with users labeling her comments as out of touch and questioning what relevance the statement has to maternity leave.

Twitter users pointed out that many families don't have the money to eat out whatsoever and sprang to the defense of the salad bar.

The Duchess of Sussex has been accused of using her British royal title to meddle at the top of U.S. politics by lobbying two senior Washington figures on Joe Biden's proposed parental and sick leave legislation in a 1,000-word letter sent on the Sussexes' own headed paper.

The letter was sent, she claims, as an engaged citizen and a parent and as a mom, but is being viewed as her most overtly political intervention in U.S. life yet after speculation she has dreams of being a Democrat politician or even to run for U.S. president.

Prince Charles is known to have written to several U.S. presidents over the years, including Joe Biden, and also sent the so-called Black Spider letters to British government ministers and politicians over the years, but never in the same public way as Meghan's missive to Schumer and Pelosi.