Hail to the Chef (page 2 of 2)

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SWAT Teams, Side Dishes, and Surprises

As if the role of First Family cook wasn't daunting enough, what other chef has Senators drop by for lunch and world leaders stay for dinner? Not to mention monthly feasts that are often based around a theme, like Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday. The Executive Chef, who oversees two full-time cooks and two pastry chefs, makes it all happen inside the main kitchen, tucked behind the grand stairs leading up to the North Portico. With its stainless-steel surfaces, its burners along the side wall and its hanging pots and pans, the kitchen looks much like one you'd find in any midsized restaurant. Except that Secret Service SWAT teams, with rifles on their backs, wave at the cooks as they walk by.

At the busiest times of the year, the regular kitchen team cannot possibly cope. For big parties, they draw on cooks from Washington's restaurants and hotels, sometimes ending up with 20 cooks in the kitchen and more preparing food out in the hallways.

During the last holiday season, the kitchen catered to 9,500 guests. The pastry chefs baked 30,000 Christmas cookies, while the regular cooks prepared 2,100 pounds of sweet potatoes alone. The planning for these holiday parties takes place as early as August, but the pastry chef begins work on his creations in June, especially on the Christmas fruitcake.

Given the size of such White House events, mistakes can be disastrous. All good chefs know how to recover from missteps in cooking, but it can be hard to correct an organizational error. Early in the Clinton years, a Congressional picnic for 2,800 people was in trouble: Congress was delayed with legislation and 1,000 guests were no-shows. So the White House thought it would invite some volunteer staffers to eat the surplus food -- and got a bit carried away. Instead of 1,000 new guests, the staff invited 2,000. Scheib and his team began raiding storerooms to cook giant vats of pasta and sauce, and mix huge bowls of salad. The next day Scheib called the White House social secretary. "You can't do that," he complained. "We're not an all-you-can-eat buffet."

Quantity is less of a problem when it comes to feeding pampered heads of state. The challenge instead is coping with special dietary requests and some pretty eccentric behavior. Henry Haller recalls one dinner in the Johnson White House for King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Having researched the food requirements of the Saudi party, Haller was surprised to hear that the King was suffering from a mysterious stomach condition and was refusing to eat the prepared meal. "They cooked their food at their embassy and came in with leather suitcases," says Haller. "They presented the food directly from the suitcases, serving him right behind his chair."

King Hassan of Morocco didn't bring suitcases filled with food, but he brought something else to the White House -- his own cook. On one visit, the king's retinue included food-tasters checking for poison. "They had these people in fezzes tasting everything," says Scheib. "It looked like something out of Casablanca."

Cris Comerford is braced for it all -- the intimidating roster of visitors, the stately dinners, the endless cooking for holiday fetes. But her primary responsibility as Executive Chef will remain as it has always been: taking care of her "houseguests" by serving up exactly the right thing -- just as the cooks managed to do when President Ronald Reagan was recovering from an assassin's bullet. His simple request to the kitchen? A favorite food: macaroni and cheese.

It was yet another reminder that, even working inside such a grand and historical residence, the White House kitchen is just trying to make one family feel comfortably at home.

From Reader's Digest - May 2006

 

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