OLD TOWN CRIER

The OLD TOWN CRIER is an insightful and interesting publication in Alexandria Virginia that covers local travel, events and people profiles. They recently interviewed me for the following article:

We live in an age of celebrity chefs. Former White House Chef Walter Scheib, now managing his own business, The American Chef, is certainly one of them.

Chef Scheib writes about his White House years in “White House Chef, Eleven years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen”, going into a third printing. Those eleven years began in 1994, early in the first Clinton term and ended in 2005 midway in the G.W. Bush years. Interspersed with recipes, the book is a fascinating read and a way of looking at the White House as a residence, a full time home for the First Family, and very much a home away from home for the large staff of people who keep it running.

For anyone panicked by a dinner party for eight, Scheib’s book furnishes a look at the logistics of preparing state dinners, receptions, picnics, private parties and the daily feeding of the two First Families he served.

“You are there to serve the First Family and carry out their wishes, and you leave your politics at the kitchen door,” Chef said, over a recent dinner at Geranio’s. (Foodie Alert: Chef ate duck confit salad, pasta with tuna and blackberry sorbet, drank Chardonnay). So don’t expect to read anything scandalous in this book, though a tabloid offered megabucks for him to do that. “I wonder if they have an office marked ‘Honor Purchases’”, he said.

You can read the rest of the story here.