Hail to the Chef

The first woman to run the White House kitchen is ready to take the heat.

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Keeping House and Running the Kitchen

In the world of culinary news, it was one hot morsel: Laura Bush was looking for a new White House Executive Chef. The right person would have the talent and temperament to handle extraordinary stress -- from sprawling events on the South Lawn to state dinners for world leaders to the needs and tastes of the First Family itself. In a letter to Mrs. Bush, a group of female chefs and restaurateurs urged one other attribute: Could the next White House chef be the first woman ever named to the prestigious post?

In August of last year, after a six-month search, the First Lady found her right there in the White House kitchen. Cristeta Comerford, a 42-year-old naturalized citizen who'd grown up in the Philippines, had been one of the cooks in the White House kitchen for the past decade. Now she was being tapped for the top job. The clincher for Laura Bush? Comerford's tasteful menu at an official dinner for India's prime minister, when she paired a simple pan-roasted halibut with a complex Indian-style mix of basmati rice, pistachios and currants.

Diminutive and soft-spoken, Comerford was a hotel chef in Washington before she joined the White House staff in 1995. And she admits that none of her experience fully prepared her for the Executive Mansion. "In a way, it's a hotel: [the President's family] stays here, you make them comfortable and give them hot meals," she says. "But at the same time, you get to know them more intimately. It's like having your own houseguest."

A houseguest who just happens to be the leader of the free world, padding around your kitchen looking for a bite to eat. Early in President Bush's first term, Comerford and her colleagues discovered that their new boss was a creature of habit. Each morning, after working out, the President would wander into the First Family's kitchen in the second-floor residence, wearing his gym shorts and T-shirt. The chefs would normally be finishing work on lunch for his wife, Laura -- typically a light entrée like a salad. "No, no. Not the salads," Bush would say with a wince. "I'll have a BLT." Or one of three other sandwiches that he'd choose from almost every day: grilled cheese with yellow mustard, peanut butter and honey, or a burger.

Comerford's predecessor, Walter Scheib, has also handed over a ritual of a different sort to the new exec. When Laura Bush leaves town, the phone often rings down in the kitchen. Freed from wifely supervision, the President will say something like, "Look, we've been having salads all week. Can I have a cheeseburger now?" If that sounds more like Bill Clinton, well, Scheib says he got the same calls from him when Hillary went on trips.

The two Presidents may not have a whole lot in common, but they do love the same kinds of food. So Scheib made sure to stock up on things like a big bag of nachos for the football game, storing them in a corner of the kitchen he called the "secret stash."

Henry Haller, the longest-serving White House chef in living memory, survived everyone from the Johnsons to the Reagans by adapting quickly to each new set of tastes. Still, he found himself caught out on inaugural day in 1969. Haller knew the Nixons loved steaks and had bought a selection of prime cuts in readiness. That evening, as the First Family was dressing for the inaugural balls, Pat Nixon called down to the kitchen with a request for four steaks and a bowl of cottage cheese. Nobody had warned Haller that the new President was wild about cottage cheese. After a frantic search around Washington in a White House limo, one of his team finally found a container. The first crisis of the Nixon Presidency was over.

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