A White House chef is bringing his dishes to Port Angeles

There are a few things the public knows about presidential palates. The media gobbled up the fact that President George H.W. Bush hated broccoli:

“I do not like broccoli and I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid. And my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not gonna eat anymore broccoli.”

Before going vegan, post White House, President Bill Clinton was known for his burger runs.

But one guy who knows a lot about the way a few presidents ate is John Moeller, who was a White House chef from 1992 to 2005.

“Took care of the family, breakfast, lunch and dinner and their guests. And then you have the banquets. You have all the state dinners, receptions, picnics on the south grounds. These are all occurring while you’re taking care of Chelsea having a little snack up on the second floor.”

John will be in Port Angeles this weekend, at the Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival, where he will cook some of the dishes from his new memoir/cookbook, “Dining at the White House. From the President’s Table to Yours.”

“So it’s a grilled shiitake mushroom with fine herbs, Dungeness crab meat, a red pepper coulis and some Comte cheese that’s going to be melted over the top of it. That was served as a working luncheon in the honor of the President of the Councils of Ministry of the Italian Republic. This was on Thursday, January 30th, 2003.”

Cooking for famous people becomes the norm for a White House chef, who can expect pretty much anyone to be seated around the dinner table.

“You’d be there slicing and dicing something in the kitchen. You look up and, oh, Anthony Hopkins walks in. Steven Tyler, Lenny Kravitz, Cal Ripken popped in there once. One afternoon we heard some piano playing on a Saturday afternoon, it was kind of quiet. I said, ‘Boy, what’s going on in the Cross Hall?’ I went up there, I turned the corner, and there’s nobody in there but one person sitting at the piano, – it’s Mick Jagger. He just wanted to bang at the keys a little bit, you know.”

But when a pre-teen Chelsea Clinton lived in the White House, she craved a little normalcy; the simple bliss of baking her own desserts.

“Butler comes down with a silver tray. It had a list of ingredients. You know, cup and a half of this, quarter cup of that, teaspoon of this. So I looked at the list and got the sugar, the flour, the butter, measured out the baking soda and everything else. I had it all in nice little bowls. I gave it to him, he took it back upstairs. He came back downstairs, gave it back to me and said, ‘She wants to measure it out herself.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ So I dumped everything in big bowls, gave the measuring utensils to them and they went upstairs and she made her little cake that afternoon.”

I asked John if any of the Presidents or First Ladies he cooked for missed being in the kitchen.

“Not really, I mean you can get pretty used to being served. Barbara Bush was asked about a year or so ago, ‘What do you miss most about the White House?’ She said, ‘The Chefs.’ I would miss it too.”

John shared some of the President’s favorite daily meals:

“I made a pretty good chicken enchilada. President Bill Clinton really enjoyed that. For George H.W. Bush, one day I made sushi rolls, salmon teriyaki, gave him some green tea afterward. He came back to the kitchen afterward and said, ‘In all four years I’ve been here, I’ve never had a meal like that.’ I said, ‘Well, thank you sir. I really appreciate that.'”

As far as what the Obama’s like to eat, I read that the family’s favorite sweets come from Seattle, they love Fran’s Chocolates. The President especially likes the smoked sea salt caramels.