Washington - When John Moeller heard about the pretzel incident, he thought he was toast.
It was January 2002, the memories of the September 11 attacks still fresh, and President George Bush was doing what millions of other Americans were doing: trying to feel normal for a while. He was watching football.
Alone in his White House quarters, Bush was popping pretzels while watching an NFL play-off. One didn’t go down right, and the president crashed to the floor after briefly losing consciousness. The fall caused only minor facial injuries – and perhaps a bruised ego.
Despite the passing, freakish nature of the incident, reporters wouldn’t let it go. They were on the story like, well, mustard on pretzels. They wanted to know the source of the salty treat. The White House remained mum.
As a sous-chef in the White House kitchen, Moeller was one of the few people in the US to know the bakery that produced the pretzel. Moeller was the one who had introduced the snack to the White House, back during the Clinton government.
The handmade beauties came from Hammond Pretzel Bakery in Lancaster, near where Moeller grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country. “Chelsea went wild on it for a little while,” Moeller said about his home-town pretzel. Hillary Clinton wrote the bakery a letter, thanking it for the healthy and tasty treat.
Then came Bush’s snack-related scare, which practically caused Moeller to start choking himself. His first thought upon hearing the news: “Am I going to be working here tomorrow?”
Moeller kept his job, but he got another lesson in the tenuous status of the White House kitchen staff, which “serves at the pleasure of the president”, as the oft-repeated phrase goes.
What does that mean in real terms for the men and women who work at the White House, feeding the US first family and their many guests and dignitaries from around the world? It means that politics, personal tastes or even a pretzel can potentially send a chef packing.
Particularly the executive chef, the person who leads the small, full-time White House culinary team. The position has become increasingly political over the years, and Moeller, who worked in the White House kitchen from 1992 to 2005, remembers when the head chef gig shifted from a mere job to a post invested with symbolism.
It was in late 1992, just weeks after Moeller started his job in the George HW Bush White House. Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse restaurant and earth mother of the US locavore movement, sent a letter to president-elect Bill Clinton and Hillary, urging them to install an American chef. The letter was signed by dozens of top chefs, including Wolfgang Puck, who was born in Austria.
At the time, Pierre Chambrin, a Frenchman, was leading the kitchen. Feeling the outside pressure, “Pierre grew despondent and finally said, ‘I’ve decided to leave’,” Moeller writes in his new book, Dining at the White House: From the President’s Table to Yours, a pull-back-the-curtain look at cooking for the world’s most powerful family.
It took more than a year, but Waters finally got her American chef. Chambrin was eventually replaced by Walter Scheib, who introduced his own spin on American cuisine.
Waters’s letter “maybe did politicise the position more than it had been in the past. It became more volatile than it had been,” said Moeller, 52.
These days, cooking for the first family may have its politics (and perks), but it remains a demanding job. It also requires an unassuming chef who doesn’t insist on forcing flavours on a president and family members who have their own likes and dislikes at the dinner table. The job, in essence, is that of a glorified personal chef.
For example, Moeller knew the elder Bush was a well-travelled man who knew a lot about cuisine. So one evening, he decided to take a risk. He prepared the president an Asian-flavoured meal: miso soup, California rolls, salmon teriyaki and other dishes.
“Afterwards, the president came back, and he shook my hand.”
– Washington Post