The 30th president, Calvin Coolidge, enjoyed spending time in the White House with man's best friend. Trump, who became president over two years ago, has so far hosted only one. At Hoover’s April 29, 1931, state dinner for the king of Siam, according to the Washington Evening Star, Hoover served “an elaborate menu” of “a rare species of fish, cold lobster, cunningly devised baskets of beets, stacked with cucumbers, smothered chicken breast, endive in spring salad, fruits, ices and candy.”. A week prior to the event, however, Ford’s national security advisor, Jack Marsh, issued a memo requesting the vice president host in Nixon’s place. Then again, Nixon wouldn’t have shared his wine. But it really got that way with Kennedy,” the historian William Seale said. A country that knew of Chinese food mainly as chop suey and egg rolls was exposed to a variety of new dishes during the media blitz—mu shu pork and Peking duck, for instance. James Buchanan: Beef, mutton, venison, ham, terrapin, calf’s head dressed as terrapin, Pennsylvania Dutch specialties such as scrapple and succotash, moss rose cake, peach charlotte, Confederate pudding and Jeff Davis pie, grape pie, and ice cream. Lyndon Johnson: Chipped beef, biscuits with ham or deer sausage, lamb hash, chicken chow mein, chop suey, spinach soufflé, salad chopped fine and eaten with a spoon, barbecued spare ribs, cold tapioca pudding, and fudge. The bottle was wrapped in a napkin to conceal the label from the congressmen. Presidents | Selected wines were just as diverse as the food. and Barbara Bush not to talk to the queen. Several desserts were named after the guest of honor, such as “Glace Macapagal” (for Filipino President Diosdado Macapagal in October 1964) and “Meringue Park” (for South Korean President Park Chung-hee in May 1965). George W. Bush and Obama, both two-term presidents, hosted 13 dinners apiece. Chef René Verdon was aghast. Carter’s bridge-building efforts were another reason for the whirl at the table. When King George VI and Queen Elizabeth toured United States — making them the first reigning British monarchs to visit America — the Roosevelts served them hot dogs. Yet Trump followed up on his fast-food pledges with his infamous spread for the Clemson University football team during the government shutdown, when Trump dipped shallowly into his own pockets to provide 300 hamburgers. But the time was right for change. Eleanor Roosevelt would have been proud. At Churchill’s March 1949 state dinner, he was served sherry, white wine, martinis, scotch, and “Old Jack”—a combination that must have made for some unsteady footsteps home even by the two leaders’ hard-drinking standards. For lunch and dinner, roast beef, wheat bread (which he liked to roll into balls and shoot at his children, pretending they were ammunition), hominy, and rice pudding, which he preferred to all other desserts. “Because most of it sucked!” Pollan said. It might as well have been 60. By the end of 1974, all of the wines at a Ford state dinner were from the United States. Is it better to serve the foods of the guest of honor’s country or to demonstrate a universal culinary language? But the simplicity of Eisenhower’s dinners has less to do with militaristic discipline and more to do with the customs of the time. Sicha, Michael Franklin Pierce: Fried clams, Daniel Webster’s chowder, apple pan dowdy, New Hampshire seed cookies, and New Hampshire fried pies. Julia Child’s epochal book Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published in 1961, the year Kennedy took office. Chambrin, who came to the White House as a sous-chef in 1990, loved working for the Bushes. They were too “Bush” for a change president. The concept of a salad morphed from a cream-cheese-smothered-watercress monstrosity to a garden in a bowl. If Ronald Reagan were president today, it’s likely his 52 extravagant, star-studded state dinners would paint him as an out-of-touch elitist, too. The food served was also rather modest in comparison to what previous presidents provided. William Howard Taft: For breakfast: grapefruit, partridge (both potted and grilled), venison, waffles, hominy, rolls, and bacon (at least once in the same meal) as well as steak, oranges, and tremendous amounts of coffee throughout the day; smelts, lamb chops, salted almonds, deviled almonds, lobster stew, lobster a la Newburg, salmon cutlets, tenderloin, cold tongue and ham, terrapin soup, Billi Bi, salads (especially peach), baked possum, and persimmon beer. The concept of a salad morphed from a cream-cheese-smothered-watercress monstrosity to a garden in a bowl. “Very little of it was palatable for the table,” he wrote. His taste in food was at times as questionable as the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—according to then-Executive Chef Walter Scheib’s memoir, Bush insisted that any hot dogs prepared in the White House should be steamed and never grilled. He mixed it along with the other gift wines into spiked punches for receptions instead. President Biden gives remarks ahead of his meeting with CEOs at the White House about how the country and businesses can recover from the coronavirus pandemic. That’s as many as Richard Nixon threw his first year in office. Often this information came from contemporary accounts, and occasionally from the recipe cards of first ladies who left for posterity the dishes they’d cooked for their husbands, during the White House years as well as the early days of their marriages. (The Washington Post/Getty Images/National Archives). “Walter Scheib was not a very good cook,” Chambrin said. Books . Then-Princess Elizabeth of England was served baked Old Missouri ham, french fried potato balls, and watermelon pickles along with the lobster thermidor at her state dinner in October 1951, shortly before she became queen. During this Francophilic era of American state dinners, lobster bellevue was reserved for a limited number of state dinners. Fancy feasts would have been a bad look in the middle of the Great Depression—and then positively treasonous during the (limited) rationing of the United States in World War II. The late 1970s saw so much growth in the American wine market that by 1980, sales surpassed that of hard liquor. 6.7m Followers, 5 Following, 58 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from The White House (@whitehouse) John Tyler: Woodcock, pigeons, oysters, kidneys, ham, venison, champagne, and grateful pudding. Credits: Editing by James Palmer and Sharon Weinberger. “Hans Raffert was a very nice person, but cooking-wise he was very old-fashioned,” said Pierre Chambrin, who began serving as executive chef in August 1992 after Raffert decided to retire. Choosing the menu for a luncheon given in honor of Winston Churchill, Truman ordered oyster soup, celery hearts, filet mignon, asparagus hollandaise, and watermelon pickle. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrive at the North Portico of the White House on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. 1. Richard Nixon’s state dinners were like his own character: complicated, underrated, and nearly destroyed by flaws. Forget the “Me Decade.” For the White House, the 1980s might as well have been the Mousse Decade. President Donald Trump departs the White House one last time before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. His output was as solid and steady as Ford himself. The number of female candidates in the upcoming 2020 presidential election also raises another question: If the first lady traditionally oversees the state dinner, would the first gentleman take that responsibility if one of these candidates won? Special thanks to Elizabeth Hansen, Jason Kaplan, Eduardo Medrano, Jennifer Newby, Zachary Roberts, Sydney Soderberg, E. Kirsten Andersen Thomas, Alison Wheelock, and Tammy Williams for their assistance in obtaining the state dinner menus. Copy-editing by Nina Goldman. Dishes like the grilled cannon of Colorado lamb with garlic fried milk for Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 didn’t exactly jive with Michelle Obama’s crusade against childhood obesity, but the White House’s continued emphasis on fresh, local ingredients ensured Obama state dinners were more heart-friendly than an evening with, say, Harry S. Truman. Alex Brandon/AP Photo Biden and the first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, are avid users of the uber-popular workout machinery and have regularly ridden one for exercise while isolated at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Biden administration has made several changes to the White House website with an … * This includes the planned menu for his canceled Nov. 25, 1963 state dinner honoring Ludwig Erhard, the chancellor of West Germany. Design by Lori Kelley, Adam Griffiths, and C.K. The country’s abundant natural resources and ample arable land fueled an agrarian economy that persisted decades after Europe experienced its industrial revolution. The menus for Presidents John F. Kennedy through George H.W. (National Archives). But more than any other president, Trump wears his lowbrow taste in food as a badge of honor. That may be true, but the Bushes were also not adventurous eaters. King Hassan II of Morocco was served cold pumpkin souffle with crystallized ginger and blackberry sauce for dessert in September 1991. The White House state dinner menus show how American tastes have changed over time—and with them, the image that the country projects to the world. With modern weapons it just does not make sense. When Chef Verdon quit in December 1965, they hired Henry Haller as his replacement. The celebrity chefs Marcus Samuelsson, Rick Bayless, Anita Lo, and Mario Batali each had a turn in the White House kitchen. Sadly, for Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson through George H.W. Sometimes more than once. Nixon’s opening volley to Brezhnev would be returned five days later, when the premier hosted a “reciprocal dinner” at the Soviet Embassy. Instructions | The ever-moderate and incremental Eisenhower was, in fact, the first president to serve California wines at White House social functions—but only at luncheons and dinners lower on the social totem pole than the state dinner. Could President Trump's refusal to concede impact the 2021 turnover? Bush the answer to that last question was yes. “They were not tolerant of mistakes. After admiring his cowboy boots engraved with “God Save the Queen,” she asked whether he was considered the black sheep in his family. By December 1987, tensions had thawed, and the White House even threw a state dinner for Mikhail Gorbachev. Nancy Reagan, taking a more hands-on approach than most first ladies, tried to freshen up menu selections that had now been used for more than 20 years. George H.W. Still, by 1981 it was apparent that the state dinner food was becoming an archaism. Dwight D. Eisenhower: Roast stuffed breast of veal, beef stew, oxtail soup, chicken noodle soup, rare steak, quail hash, trout, corn pudding, string beans, succotash, fluffy turnips, and prune whip. And no fruit course.”. Scheib wrote in his 2007 memoir, White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen, that he left because Laura Bush wanted to make her mark on the culinary scene. She insisted on overseeing every menu and even included some of her own desserts at state dinners from time to time, such as the gelatin-based “Frosted Mint Delight” (so ’50s). He wasn’t nicknamed “Tricky Dick” for nothing. The following state dinner menus are currently unavailable or incomplete: Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Aug. 5, 1981; Luis Herrera Campíns of Venezuela, Nov. 17, 1981; Sandro Pertini of Italy, March 25, 1982; and Moussa Traore of Mali, Oct. 6, 1988. Seven of those state dinners were in the last five months of 1974 alone, his first five months of office. An account from the Washington Post in May 1991 reveals he was given strict instructions by George H.W. The menu for Eisenhower’s June 4, 1958, state dinner for President Theodor Heuss of West Germany could not be found by the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. That goat cheese gateau shows the world what the United States thinks tastes good, in 2018, as interpreted by the Trump administration. Aspic was finally, finally out; field greens and fava beans were in. President Harry S. Truman and first lady Bess Truman with President Gabriel González Videla of Chile and his wife, Rosa Markmann de González Videla, at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington during the Chilean president’s visit on April 14, 1950. He maintains that these changes were a political move, not a result of Clinton’s own foodie tastes. The menus were written in English again. That’s not what we serve here at the White House,” said White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers upon Chambrin’s departure in March 1994. That would be no mean achievement.”. The other guests were given “the cheaper stuff.” In their book The Final Days, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein depict the president serving a Bordeaux worth $5 (about $25 today) to the congressmen he entertained on the presidential yacht one evening, while stewards poured him a bottle of $30 Chateau Margaux (about $150 now), a favored wine of President Thomas Jefferson. “Generally beef has long been seen as the meat of aspiration, of striving,” said the food writer Adrian Miller, whose 2017 book The President’s Kitchen Cabinet describes the history of African-Americans in the White House kitchen. Johnson was not a picky eater, but he was definitely a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy—literally. And, he added, “So many cultures have taboos about pork.”. Bush, every course deserved its own mousse. These were all on the menu when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt hosted Britain’s King George VI at a 1939 White House state dinner. Andrew Johnson: Fresh milk and butter (which a White House dairy was established to provide), popcorn, roasted apples and chestnuts, hoppin’ john, canvasback duck, wild turkey, pine bark stew, sweet potato pone, sweet potato pie, and sweet potato pudding. This time, the queen was served medallions of Maine lobster and cucumber mousse with aurora sauce, crown roast of lamb, galettes fines herbes, potato croquettes, bouquets of vegetables, watercress and Belgian endive salad, St. Andre and chevre cheeses, and pistachio marquise with fresh raspberries for dessert. George W. Bush never possessed the makings of a prolific state dinner host. On the one hand, the dinner is devoted to the guest of honor. Eliminating foreign wines from the State Dining Room also helped deal with “the major problem of the balance-of-payments deficit and gold outflow,” the New York Times reported in 1965. Carter was constantly on the defensive during his presidency, facing a country that believed itself to be in terminal decline and perceived as a weak and uncertain leader. Nancy Reagan is served an orange surprise dessert during the dinner for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone on April 30, 1987. Bush, known for his hatred of broccoli, never served it at his state dinners. Nixon hosted 40 state dinners before he resigned. It’s not an entirely personal matter. Nevertheless, a few subtle changes helped distance Trump’s first state dinner from Obama’s. Choire Animation by Billy Buntin. (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum). All the Presidents’ Meals is the product of extensive research at presidential libraries, the National Archives, and Library of Congress, as well as interviews with historians, food writers, and former White House chefs. They’re referred to on the menu as the slightly less Chick-fil-A “potatoes gaufrettes.”. Privacy Policy. In the age before social media, a state dinner was one of the White House’s best opportunities to show the world America’s hospitality and form bonds with other world leaders. “George W. Bush didn’t like the food.”. For fans of state dinners, the Reagan administration was morning in America. What he lacked in broccoli, though, he made up in mousse: His and Reagan’s menus seem to prove that nearly any food can be whipped into submission. The data do not include menus from three state dinners: President Walter Scheel of West Germany, June 16, 1975; Prime Minister Takeo Miki of Japan, Aug. 5, 1975; and the emperor and empress of Japan, Oct. 2, 1975. Pat Nixon and Jackie Kennedy were good friends, according to Seale, despite the bitterness of the 1960 election. Unfortunately, Nixon’s sophisticated French fare is brought down by his taste in salad. Starting with the state dinner for South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem in May 1957, the wines are finally labeled, too. But from what we do know, thanks to numerous luncheons and dinners with smaller guest sizes, the food stood in the tradition of Roosevelt, albeit with better preparation and a Missouri twist thanks to Truman’s home state. It was the first Chinese wine ever served at a state dinner. Perhaps as a typically Nixonian attempt to convince others of his status, 13 of those dinners were in his first year alone. That’s not wholly off base; Eisenhower’s dining tastes were forged in the Army, and though he was an accomplished cook, his preference for simple food never disappeared. For the purposes of a more complete understanding of the White House’s culinary journeys, some menus for dinners not designated as a true “state dinner” (which must occur during an official state visit) were also included. No American menu has reached the heights—or lows—of the infamous banquet served to a visiting Soviet delegation by Mao Zedong’s China in 1954, where the centerpiece, “Dragon Fighting the Tiger,” consisted of a skinned cat and a python. That landmark decision, combined with Reagan’s immigration reform of 1986, ensured the country’s demographics and taste buds were slowly becoming more diverse than ever before. The LBJ White House state dinner menus never included barbecue but nevertheless resemble a French cookbook as interpreted by Texans. Calvin Coolidge: Roast beef, Vermont pickles, Vermont chickens (raised in a yard he had built behind the White House over Teddy Roosevelt’s mint patch), curry of veal, pork apple pies, custard pies, and cornmeal muffins. Emphasis on “healthy.” Because the low-fat diet craze was booming in the 1990s, and because Bill Clinton was notorious for his love of McDonald’s and enchiladas, Hillary Clinton pushed hard for “low fat” meals. Bill Clinton: Soft tacos, chicken enchiladas, chili con queso, cheeseburgers, ribs, cinnamon rolls, lemon chess pie, peach pie, sweet potato casserole, Egg McMuffins, and Kool-Aid. While Johnson downplayed Kennedy’s French revolution, Nixon brought it back in force. Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson also made a decision that would define state dinners at the White House for decades. But the state dinner’s future is uncertain. (Taylor was also the only president ever believed to have died in office because of a meal, in his case a large amount of iced milk and cherries on a hot day. That passion for wine did not translate into the White House. She instructed the White House kitchen how to cook “the Missouri way.” This meant lots of fried chicken or fried turkey and a remarkable amount of melons and pickles—sometimes pickled melons. “I would like to assure you … that we will continue the policy we have pursued up to now,” the president told King Hussein, according to the August 1974 dinner’s Memoranda of Conversation. “President Kennedy was a small eater; he often had to be reminded that it was dinner time… politics always took preference over food.” — The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. The Soviets blankly refused to partake in the traditional festive Cantonese dish, while two secretaries were violently ill, and an already rocky relationship crumbled further. Previously served only once before at a state dinner (by Carter, always ahead of his time), Bush brought the most American of meats back not once but twice—Mexican President Vicente Fox was served Colorado bison (from a state that voted for Bush in both elections) at Bush’s first state dinner, on Sept. 5, 2001. The dish shows the world what the United States thinks tastes good, in 2018, as interpreted by the Trump administration. Copyright Foreign Policy, 2019 | Millard Fillmore: Beef stew, mock turtle soup, fish, ham with macaroni, duck, chicken, pigeon, and larded sweet breads. “It is a matter of some curiosity that Adams, with all his exposure to diverse European cuisines, showed so little interest in food. Unlike previous administrations, their state dinner menus share almost nothing in common with one another, skipping merrily between styles. The president, perhaps preoccupied by Congress’s ongoing investigation into grounds for his impeachment, perhaps shunning events covered by the evil liberal media, instead spent that evening at the Veterans of Foreign Wars 25th Annual Congressional Banquet, where he was presented with a case of five commemorative medallions. Decades before first lady Michelle Obama’s garden, he grew vegetables on the White House roof and herbs in the East Garden. Like Eisenhower’s state dinners, the elder Bush’s 32 such gatherings were a transitional phase between eras of state dinner cuisine. Bayless, a Chicago chef associated with various Mexican restaurants, was recruited to prepare the state dinner honoring Mexican President Felipe Calderón on May 19, 2010. It’s hard to imagine Nixon serving the glazed Virginia ham with brandied peaches as Carter did at the dinner honoring West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on July 13, 1977. President Joe Biden, the 46th U.S. president, has arrived at the White House. Jacqueline Kennedy restructured the White House staff and created a new executive chef position to handle formal dinners. How were the Reagans able to throw so many glamorous state dinners? * We counted data from a total of 49 dinners, including the dinner for Prince Charles and Princess Diana on Nov. 9, 1985. The menus could not be found by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.
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