Entertaining Tips From A White House Chef : Walter Scheib

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a White House chef, in charge of anything from state dinners to the First Lady's morning oatmeal? For Walter Scheib, executive chef under the Clinton and the second Bush administrations, "the culinary component is the easiest part."

In a recent phone interview, Scheib provided an inside look at what is generally a very closed kitchen, where the job of cooking and entertaining presents personal complexities beyond the usual race-against-the-clock, no-excuses pressure. The White House is an historic site, a national park, and a museum, but it is also a private home. Its chef is responsible for all private dining, from movie popcorn to school lunches, and all hosted events, such as state dinners, enormous South Lawn picnics, and guest chef events. 

So just how does a White House chef manage party fouls, banquets for visiting dignitaries, and the daily challenge of delivering perfection to the presidential family?

Chef Walter Scheib and family with the Clintons (Photo courtesy theamericanchef.com)

Scheib's success came down to three main guidelines: knowing his audience; discretion; and organization.

Like any personal chef, the White House chef must master the preferences of his primary clients; pleasing the First Family, specifically the First Lady, is by defintion his or (for current White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford) her primary role. Even if Nelson Mandela and hundreds of other VIPs enjoyed themselves, the First Lady had to be satisfied, or the meal would be considered a failure. 

When he started, Scheib was tackling some specific White House entertaining mandates, namely to elevate American cuisine within a previously French-centric repertoire and to transition from plattered to plated service. He also needed to factor in dietary restrictions for the family and its guests: healthy food for the Clintons, Tex-Mex for the Bushes, and the integration of sustainable, organic ingredients along the way.   

In his book White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen, Scheib details his constant sensitivity on both an intimate and a large banquet dining scale. He recalls a certain day in which First Lady Clinton was a little down.  Feeling a strong compulsion to help, he decided to scrap the usual healthy fare and rush her up a steaming-hot cast-iron skillet full of staff-meal fajitas. She laughed, enjoyed the meal, and called later to thank him. 

On that occasion, Scheib knew to diverge from the Clintons'  mostly health-conscious, active lifestyles, in which food was of great importance. First Lady Bush chose not to politicize her preference for organic ingredients, which she developed through her Austin-based connections to Whole Foods, but Scheib had to manage this directive in most meals. Both administrations, with the assistance of Scheib and his team, laid the groundwork for the Obamas, who have taken their health-conscious, locavore agenda to a whole new level. First Lady Obama, her White House Garden, and the DIY movement have made a huge impact on the nation's relationship to food.  

Scheib and family with the Bushes (Photo courtesy of theamericanchef.com)

Habits like dietary restrictions begin in the home, but the First Family sets an example for the nation, which brings us to the matter of discretion.  National security and historic preservation are at stake. First and foremost, the Presidential Family must remain protected while entertaining, but all guests must also feel safe and comfortable. After all, Scheib points out, the country will only take note if something goes wrong, and there's no option to "take ten percent off the check or offer a free cheesecake."

Luckily for Scheib, his fielded more matters of cultural property than security during his tenure in the White House kitchen. The staff always had to be very careful amidst the irreplaceable heritage of their surroundings, but in a rare exception, a very sorry employee faced suspension for breaking a just-refurbished antique English crystal sconce.  

More delicate measures had to be taken when a guest was involved in property matters in order to avoid awkwardness. Scheib recalls one evening in which a fork from a historical mother-of-pearl and gold-plated flatware set disappeared. Such "borrowing" required a very polite and precise chain-of-command. The staff, who have an inventory of every service utensil and a detailed record of all guests including individual security clearances, will immediately note a missing item.  A butler must then search discretely, and if necessary, inquire without implying an accusation. If the item is not found, the guest will not be invited back. (In the fork incident, someone anonymously sent it back to the White House a couple weeks later.)

organization down to the last detail. For the Clinton family's first state dinner (for the Japanese emperor and empress in 1994), the White House staff performed a full dress rehearsal, with surrogates for all 300 guests including nametags! Scheib recounts the event with great admiration and affection: "[Hillary] is that detailed...  brilliant."  But with equal earnestness, he reiterates that under such circumstances "there can be no mistakes."

( (Photo courtesy of theamericanchef.com)

To accomplish a seamless state dinner, the chef, social secretary, and numerous other parties might undergo months of advance planning stages to make sure that everything goes right. Planning a 12-course dinner typically requires extensive menu development.  For Scheib, banquet dining meant the presentation of tastings of a few courses from three to four different menu options. Once the First Lady selected her favorite items from among these menus, they would compile the final menu. It was Scheib's job to ensure that the final aggregated menu have no repetition of ingredients.  If needed, he also set up re-tastings to ensure the meal be exactly to the First Lady's taste. The service needed to be technically flawless, beautiful, and fast (about one-and-a-half hours of proper meal time so that the First Family could mingle more during what might be a five-hour affair). 

Just thinking about it seems enough to make anyone lose sleep, which Scheib did.  His wife Jean, who submitted his resume to the White House in the first place, frequently awakened him from stormy kitchen nightmares: "You're dishing up in your mind again."  Chuckling about this, Scheib emphasizes that the White House chef performs one of the oldest jobs, using "sharp objects, flames, and dead animals" to make people happy. White House dining is about "finding the mother in it," to provide an otherwise always-being-watched family with "a piece of humanity, reality, and normalcy."

For more on Scheib's current projects, tips, and recipes, visit theamericanchef.com.