From 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.
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.