Every book, like every restaurant or political movement, is a collaborative effort, and in this case an exceptional number of people helped bring this book into the world. At heart it is a family project: Dinner with the President is dedicated to my parents, Hector and Erica Prud’homme, whose enthusiasms for food, entertaining, politics, and history—usually debated over dinner—set me on a path to consider the presidents and the White House through a gastronomic lens. Speaking of enthusiasms, my indefatigable grandaunt, Julia Child, who helped inspire my interest in this subject with her investigations of presidential food, is a recurring character and presiding intelligence in these pages. And, without a doubt, I could not have undertaken hours of research and written (and rewritten) these words without the amazing support, encouragement, and suggestions of my wife, Sarah, and our children. This book has been a long, sometimes challenging, COVID-delayed, but always fascinating, enlightening, and delicious journey. I am lucky and grateful to have had such a wonderful family sustain me along the way.
Of course there were many others whose generosity, fortitude, and curiosity helped this project. First and foremost, I have benefited from the calm, clear-eyed guidance of my editor, Lexy Bloom, who tweaked my words and tightened my logic to make this a better book. Lexy’s able assistant, Morgan Hamilton, kept me on schedule and was helpful in my photo research. I also owe a debt to the copy editor, Ingrid Sterner, who carefully combed through my thicket of words, unsnarled malaprops, and corrected names and dates. And I would also like to thank Sarah New and Sara Eagle, as well as Cassandra Pappas for the book’s design, Megan Wilson and John Gall for the jacket design, and Nicole Pedersen and Lorraine Hyland for shepherding the book through production.
I would not have gotten to this estimable crew at Alfred A. Knopf without the sage advice of my agent, Tina Bennett, whom I can always rely on for a wise word, a great pitch, and enthusiastic encouragement.
The presidency is a vast subject, and when it came to researching the food of the White House, I owe special thanks to Constance Carter. The former head of the Science Reference Section at the Library of Congress, she went above and beyond the call of duty to ferret out books, articles, and images—many of which I would never have discovered on my own—and introduce me to people like Betty Monkman, the former chief curator at the White House.
Another wonderful resource were the curators of Julia Child’s Kitchen, and FOOD: Transforming the American Table, the popular exhibits at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, in Washington, D.C. I am particularly indebted to Rayna Green, Paula Johnson, Anthea Hartig, and Bethanee Bemis. Apropos of Julia Child’s Kitchen, I tip my hat to my colleagues at the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts, who are stalwart and encouraging.
None of the former presidents or First Ladies I reached out to were willing to talk to me about food. They are busy, of course, and entitled to their privacy; but I wondered if their reticence was due in part to the political nature of the subject, which can be touchy, or because the things we eat can be personally revealing. Nevertheless, I learned a lot about how our leaders lived by visiting their homes—the White House, of course, but also Washington’s Mount Vernon; Jefferson’s Monticello; and Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia; the President Wilson House, in Washington, D.C.; Coolidge’s family homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vermont; and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Springwood mansion, in Hyde Park, New York. I had planned further excursions, but COVID shut most historical sites down. I recommend everyone visit these places, even those who assume they are “boring” (they are not), because they bring history alive in a visceral and sometimes unexpected way: you should climb into the oculus atop Monticello to look over the fields once worked by slaves and down onto the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville; see the fabulous gardens overlooking the Hudson River, the wheelchair ramps, and odd collection of birds that FDR taxidermied as a young man, at Hyde Park; taste the Coolidge family’s Plymouth Cheese in Vermont, then visit Silent Cal’s simple and dignified grave site nearby, for instance.
I also recommend presidential-adjacent historical sites, such as Valley Forge, Fraunces Tavern, Grant’s Tomb, or Yosemite National Park. If you are curious about the subject, there are many museums dedicated to the presidency, or individual presidents, and I had a chance to visit a few of them, including the White House Visitor Center, the White House Historical Association, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and the William J. Clinton Library and Museum.
As I began my research, I wanted to talk to White House chefs as much as to First Couples, and in that I succeeded beyond my hopes. It did not start well: I could not elicit a response from executive chef Cris Comerford, and by the time I tracked down Henry Haller—who had cooked for five presidents between 1966 and 1987—he had aged and, his wife explained, lost his recall (he died in 2020, at ninety-seven). But I eventually met a half dozen presidential cooks, and each one of them had tales to tell. I began with my old friend Jacques Pépin, who was offered the job as the Kennedys’ chef, but declined in order to work for Howard Johnson’s restaurant chain. Another Frenchman, the former executive pastry chef Roland Mesnier, was grumpy but amusing. And I had the pleasure of reconnecting with his successor, Bill Yosses, a gem of a human whom I have known since 1987, when we helped build Restaurant Bouley, in New York. I chatted with the Obamas’ personal chef and food policy guru, Sam Kass, and got to know the Obamas’ favorite Mexican chef, the wonderful Rick Bayless, a recipient of the Julia Child Award in 2016. I had a good time with the former White House sous-chef Frank Ruta, now a successful Washington restaurateur. And I enjoyed a lunch with Anita Lo, the acclaimed New York cook who was the first female guest chef to prepare a state dinner, which she did for Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2015. (Regretfully, Anita’s stories, like many others, ended up on the cutting-room floor. But they were good, and maybe I’ll return to them one day, or she will.) The most helpful of all was former executive chef John Moeller, who spent thirteen years cooking for presidents Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. On President’s Day 2020, Moeller whipped up an inspired meal, and shared stories from the First Kitchen, with a group I had gathered for “My Presidential Dinner,” as I recount in the conclusion. Merci, chefs!
I had a lot of help pulling that presidential dinner together, and for her advice on party logistics, insights on the mores of Washington society, and an establishment Republican’s take on the Trump administration, I owe much to George W. Bush’s social secretary Lea Berman. She couldn’t attend our presidential dinner, sadly. Nor could Jeremy Bernard, an Obama social secretary, and Berman’s equally charming coauthor of Treating People Well: The Extraordinary Power of Civility at Work and in Life. But I am grateful to them, and to the guests who joined me on a cool, gray February evening for a warm meal and fascinating conversation about what happens behind the scenes at a state dinner.
Along with Chef Moeller, my dining companions that night included: James (Skip) Allen, a former White House usher under five administrations; Lauren Bernstein, a former state department officer and now CEO of the Culinary Diplomacy Project; Lloyd Hand, an attorney, LBJ’s chief of protocol, and a gifted conversationalist; Corby Kummer, a James Beard Award–winning food writer and raconteur extraordinaire; Theresa McCulla, a food historian and curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; Betty Monkman, former chief White House curator; Roxanne Roberts, an insightful style reporter and columnist at The Washington Post; and Ann Stock, a social secretary for the Clintons and assistant secretary for education under the Obamas. It was a memorable night, and I appreciate their time and anecdotes.
Incidentally, we held “My Presidential Dinner” at the DACOR Bacon House, a historic mansion around the corner from the White House, and the staff there was graciously accommodating—especially the director of operations, Meg Sharley, and the director of communications, Christine Skodon.
As I researched this book, I spoke to a number of thoughtful food writers and restaurateurs, and I am grateful to the following for their time and expertise: Michael Pollan, a teacher, prolific journalist, and author of books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma; Alice Waters, the guiding force behind Chez Panisse restaurant and the Edible Schoolyard Project in Berkeley, California, and author; Dan Barber, the acclaimed chef at the two Blue Hill restaurants in New York, and author of The Third Plate; Laura Shapiro, a culinary historian and author of What She Ate; and Amy Bentley, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University, and author of Inventing Baby Food.
Speaking of academics, I had read about Dr. Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard, who has written on the evolutionary importance of cooking with fire. Searching for more information, I stumbled over the Gastropod podcast, in which the hosts, Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley, interviewed Wrangham, as well as Robin Dunbar, who taught evolutionary psychology at Oxford, Brian Hayden, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University, and Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago. These experts revealed the complex underpinnings of human behavior when it comes to cooking, feasting, communal eating, and the way food connects us. Intrigued, I followed up with phone interviews with each of them, for which I am most appreciative.
Many thanks to friends old and new—Jeanne McCulloch, Tanya Steel, Deesha Dyer, Eddie Gehman Kohan, Becky Larimer, Barnet Schecter, and Louisa Spessot. And I am grateful to Hugh Davies and Matthew Levy of Schramsberg Vineyards, and enjoyed a presidential dinner with Victoria Flexner and Jay Reifel of Edible History at the Museum of Food and Drink.
When it came time for me to actually cook a few presidential recipes and mix some White House drinks, I spent wonderful hours leafing through cookbooks, memoirs, magazines, and, in the case of Dwight Eisenhower’s “Two Day Vegetable Soup,” consulting a facsimile of the hand-typed recipe he gave to the student editors of a Columbia University cookbook. It was a delight to meet Dr. Eric Colleary, who is a curator at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and in his spare time presents historical recipes on his blog, The American Table. His experiments informed mine.
There were many friends who kept my spirits up, and offered help and advice along the way. Chief among those was Shaun Donovan, who, as the secretary of housing and urban development in the Obama administration, invited me to lunch in the Navy Mess, then led me on a whirlwind tour of the White House in 2016, an experience that helped seed this book. And Adam Van Doren, a talented painter who illustrated his book, The House Tells the Story: Homes of the American Presidents, and generously shared his knowledge and library with me.
Brooklyn, New York
June 2022