It is sliced and served atop broccoli rabe, and garnished with a horseradish gremolata, apple matchsticks, and arugula. Like Eisenhower’s state dinners, the elder Bush’s 32 such gatherings were a transitional phase between eras of state dinner cuisine. And what of the food? But the simplicity of Eisenhower’s dinners has less to do with militaristic discipline and more to do with the customs of the time. It helped demonstrate to the guest of honor the American horn of plenty at its meat gelatin-coated finest and fullest. For George H.W. “The Clintons, a minority choice, were elected to offer ‘change.’ So the cuisine, too, must change,” wrote a skeptical Keith Botsford for the Independent of London in 1994. In the age before social media, a state dinner was one of the White House’s best opportunities to show the world America’s hospitality and form bonds with other world leaders. However, President Ulysses S. Grant changed the meaning of the term when he welcomed King David Kalakua of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1874. Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton required hiring archivists and research assistants to find the menus and scan photographs. Fancy feasts would have been a bad look in the middle of the Great Depression—and then positively treasonous during the (limited) rationing of the United States in World War II. If war comes we both lose.” Despite the military advantages held by the Soviet Union, Nixon argued, the United States provided a better quality of life for its citizens. The data do not include menus from three state dinners: President Walter Scheel of West Germany, June 16, 1975; Prime Minister Takeo Miki of Japan, Aug. 5, 1975; and the emperor and empress of Japan, Oct. 2, 1975. Although not a chef, Graber was “more of a foodie than what is now considered a foodie,” Ruta recalled. The cheese course was nixed, bringing state dinners down to four courses. The first course is a velvety pillow of paper-thin pasta stuffed with a puree of sweet potatoes, garnished with a hint of nutmeg and Italian parsley, and topped with browned butter and sage leaves. They were too “Bush” for a change president. His treemap includes more Cristal than a Jay-Z album. A brief history of the White House state dinners. Because New Nordic emphasizes locally foraged ingredients, one canapé even consisted of baby radishes impaled on pieces of wood from a tree in the White House backyard. A flaky and delicate pasta frolla crust is filled with a tender semolina batter and a lightly poached green apple. From the guest list and invitations, to the menus and seating arrangements, all require the careful attention of the First Lady, State Department, and White House Social Secretary. When Chef Verdon quit in December 1965, they hired Henry Haller as his replacement. He maintains that these changes were a political move, not a result of Clinton’s own foodie tastes. Bush was also probably the last president to host our old friend Queen Elizabeth, the world’s single longest-lasting head of state. Ford was saying, “Don’t worry. A look at the menus shows state dinners in the 1930s nixed the fruit but still maintained the other six courses (the seafood courses were dropped after 1942). December 8, 1987: President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan hosted a State Dinner for General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union. View the online menu of White House Restaurant and other restaurants in Warrior, Alabama. The dessert, created by the longtime Executive Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier, featured marzipan cobblestones topped with a 10-inch, dark chocolate carriage filled with (you guessed it) mousse. And Eleanor Roosevelt believed that it was more important for food to be nourishing for the lowest possible price than for it to taste good—a message she ardently conveyed to America’s housewives with recipes for mushy spaghetti casserole and prune pudding. Not a single dish—including the grilled green beans—was included on another state dinner menu. The late 1970s saw so much growth in the American wine market that by 1980, sales surpassed that of hard liquor. Right: The menu, with notes President John F. Kennedy scribbled as he prepared to give the evening’s toast. And, thanks to youthful problems with alcohol, he didn’t drink—meaning that the social lubricant that helped other presidents endure yet another formal event was out. Click on one of the six main categories to get to subcategories. At Hoover’s April 29, 1931, state dinner for the king of Siam, according to the Washington Evening Star, Hoover served “an elaborate menu” of “a rare species of fish, cold lobster, cunningly devised baskets of beets, stacked with cucumbers, smothered chicken breast, endive in spring salad, fruits, ices and candy.”. Additional Details. True to the man who passed the Civil Rights Act while regularly taking meetings on his toilet, President Johnson’s state dinner menus were one-of-a-kind and ahead of their time, pushing the boundaries of good taste. 1. And that wasn’t even technically Ford’s first state dinner—or his first state dinner with King Hussein. Pat Nixon and Jackie Kennedy were good friends, according to Seale, despite the bitterness of the 1960 election. The food on both occasions was the epitome of a fancy dinner at the time—Maine lobster en belle-vue and roast saddle of veal with a selection of fresh vegetables for the former, and Columbia River salmon in aspic and roast sirloin of beef with spring vegetables at the latter. “The menus may have something to do with the fact that the Nixons held in high esteem what the Kennedy administration had done and how they had done it at the White House,” Seale, the historian, said. It’s not an entirely personal matter. See a gallery of past White House state visits. Forget the “Me Decade.” For the White House, the 1980s might as well have been the Mousse Decade. “It seems to me that style and entertaining take a back seat to everything else that is going on today,” Ruta said. By 1975 the “broccoli au beurre” yielded to “buttered carrots.”. The Kennedys brought unprecedented class and sophistication to the White House state dinner. His output was as solid and steady as Ford himself. And everything went as they planned it.” The Reagans may have been fairly new to Washington, but thanks to their Hollywood backgrounds they were no strangers to a good party. For a May 13, 2016, state dinner honoring Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford created a multicourse tribute to New Nordic cuisine with an American twist. After the state dinner with Ludwig Erhard scheduled for the week after Kennedy was assassinated was canceled, Johnson invited the West German chancellor to his Texas ranch the following month for the first-ever “presidential barbecue.” According to Lady Bird Johnson’s diary, they served Erhard and 300 others “beans (pinto beans, always), delicious barbecued spare ribs, cole slaw, followed by fried apricot pies with lots of hot coffee. But at that same dinner, the king was also served medallions of salmon in aspic with caviar sauce. Made of chocolate and sugar, guests will enjoy a platter featuring a pumpkin, cornucopia, milk chocolate chestnuts, grapes, corn, pears, squash, tomatoes, peas, carrots, green peppers, and a beehive replica. Guests would wash these down with a tall glass of water, because Prohibition. Animation by Billy Buntin. The sausages the queen normally brought with her on visits abroad stayed home, the Washington Post reported. He hosted then-Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping in January 1979 after granting the People’s Republic of China full diplomatic recognition for the first time. Perhaps as a typically Nixonian attempt to convince others of his status, 13 of those dinners were in his first year alone. The President and Mr. Gorbachev toasted the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, symbolizing a future of diplomatic relations. The celebrity chefs Marcus Samuelsson, Rick Bayless, Anita Lo, and Mario Batali each had a turn in the White House kitchen. He liked to go to bed early and, unlike his father, he was never crazy about pomp and circumstance in the first place. (Over the last decade, age has cut down on her travel plans, though she hosted both Obama and Trump in the U.K.) At her May 7, 2007, state dinner, the queen was served dover sole almondine; saddle of spring lamb with chanterelle sauce; chive pizzelle with American caviar; roasted artichokes, pequillo peppers, and olives; spring pea soup with fernleaf lavender; an arugula, Savannah mustard, and mint romaine salad with Champagne dressing; and “Rose Blossoms” for dessert, which were pulled-sugar roses surrounded by tiny white cakes. Click again on subcategory boxes to find specific dish names. Anything before 1947, such as his state dinner with Prime Ministers Clement Attlee of Britain and William Lyon Mackenzie King of Canada in November 1945, is lost for good. President Harry S. Truman and first lady Bess Truman with President Gabriel González Videla of Chile and his wife, Rosa Markmann de González Videla, at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington during the Chilean president’s visit on April 14, 1950. A State Dinner requires at minimum, six months of preparation. And no other president can boast of a state dinner where John Travolta danced with Princess Diana. Indeed, one reason Scheib got the job was because his predecessor, Pierre Chambrin, was reluctant to cook the low-fat cuisine desired by Hillary. His taste in food was at times as questionable as the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—according to then-Executive Chef Walter Scheib’s memoir, Bush insisted that any hot dogs prepared in the White House should be steamed and never grilled. Emphasis on “healthy.” Because the low-fat diet craze was booming in the 1990s, and because Bill Clinton was notorious for his love of McDonald’s and enchiladas, Hillary Clinton pushed hard for “low fat” meals. Nearly every state dinner under Johnson included beef or steak, whereas Clinton, whose presidency coincided with the low-fat-crazed 1990s, served beef only twice. The Eisenhowers and the Khrushchevs pose before a state dinner at the White House in September 1959. Other trends reflect 80 years of shifts in the American palate. According to the White House, this dish “captures the taste, color, and texture of the season.”. An account from the Washington Post in May 1991 reveals he was given strict instructions by George H.W. The White House is welcoming the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his wife, Agnese Landini, this evening as they join Barack and Michelle Obama for their final state dinner. The ever-moderate and incremental Eisenhower was, in fact, the first president to serve California wines at White House social functions—but only at luncheons and dinners lower on the social totem pole than the state dinner. On Friday, September 25, the President and the First Lady will welcome China’s President Xi Jinping as the guest of honor to a White House State Dinner. The Gipper was three state dinners shy of beating LBJ’s record, but 52 is still four times as many as those held by George W. Bush or Barack Obama. By December 1987, tensions had thawed, and the White House even threw a state dinner for Mikhail Gorbachev. Although Nixon came from humble roots in rural Southern California, he had expensive taste, especially in wine. There was no need. The concept of a salad morphed from a cream-cheese-smothered-watercress monstrosity to a garden in a bowl. By the end of 1974, all of the wines at a Ford state dinner were from the United States. It’s tempting to look at Eisenhower’s passions for soup and toast—three different kinds of toast!—and conclude that his dinners were the epitome of the 1950s malaise of American cuisine. Sandra Shim, Michael Lomio, Hannah Flom, and Julia Laurence are interns in the Office of Digital Strategy. Mentioned far more frequently are the hard liquor selections. For a nation of mythologized yeoman farmers and field hands, feasts were an ideal and a symbol of the country’s prosperity—the USA doing what it did best. Sadly, there’s no record of his ever serving Berliners—a colloquial term for German jelly doughnuts. From the time of the first Thanksgiving, the idea of the full dinner table has held a powerful symbolic value for the United States.
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