The twentieth century began with the tremendous bounty of the Roosevelt-Taftian age of excess, which gave way to a long stretch of plain eating—an age of gastronomic mediocrity—that lasted from Woodrow Wilson through the Hoover years and the privations of the Great Depression. It wasn’t until the jaunty Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived that fine food and drink had another champion in the White House. As waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived, new kinds of foods were integrated into the American diet, lunch counters and restaurants flourished, and the advent of freezers, rail networks, and interstate highways greatly expanded markets. After World Wars I and II led to mass starvation in Europe, the green revolution fueled by wartime technology greatly increased global food supplies. Americans had more time and money to spend on travel, dining, reading, and watching television—shifts that fueled a series of gastronomic revolutions in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. As Eisenhower grilled his own steaks, the Kennedys hired a French chef, Nixon went to China, Carter brokered peace in the Middle East, and Reagan and Bush presided over the end of the Cold War, the food and entertaining at the White House underwent dramatic shifts and became the object of public fascination.