Sam Kass, the New Assistant White House Chef; Is Everybody Happy Now?
How deft a politician is Barack Obama? Pretty damn deft if you ask me. In fact, I would say he's downright Solomonic. Consider his latest bits of organic food politics sleight-of-hand:
Instead of bowing to well-intentioned pressure from Alice Waters, Danny Meyer, and Ruth Reichl in choosing a White House chef, he managed to retain the current Filipino-American White House chef Cristeta Comerford.
Comerford, according to her predecessor Walter Scheib, served lots of organic vegetables at the White House at Laura Bush's behest. Some of the vegetables even came from a White House garden. Scheib apparently pigeonholed Alice Waters at one of the Inauguration benefit dinners to inform her of all this.
Now, to make all the Michael Pollan disciples (and, I have to admit it, me) even happier, the Obamas have brought their former personal chef Sam Kass, who earned his cred at Avec, to assist Comerford in the White House. Kass is according to our sources a serious food activist and slow food supporter.
Maybe now President Obama can focus on more pressing, life-and-death, food-related issues, like saving us from the likes of the unscrupulous owners of the Georgia peanut butter factory who, according to numerous published reports, knowingly kept on turning out salmonella-laced product even after they were informed that their peanut butter was tainted.
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9 Comments:
Definitely on the serious food issues. Interesting Obama link (in a good way) to the HFCS issue. Obama tried to pass legislation to ban the use of mercury cell tech. Had the law passed, HFCS tainted with mercury would no longer be an issue by 2010.
http://expatriateskitchen.blogspot.com/2009/01/hfcs-often-contaminated-with-mercury.html
Let's hope the chef keeps some heat on these issues!
ExpatChef at 10:45PM on 01/30/09
Too bad Obama hired Tom Vilsack to head up the USDA. Would have hoped He would bring in someone who isn't in Monsanto's pocket. I think eating organic within the White House sets a great example, but I'd like to see Him hire great people across the board. Eating well shouldn't be a luxury.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15573.cfm
innocent_words at 12:51AM on 01/31/09
not to be nitpicky, but is it Cass with a C or Kass with a K?
katnsatoshi at 2:07AM on 01/31/09
It's Kass with a K. We got it right in the body of the post, and I can't figure out how we got it wrong in the headline. Thanks for pointing it out.
Ed Levine at 6:32AM on 01/31/09
FYI...my understanding is that Kass was always going to be brought in as assistant, underscore, assistant WH Chef. It happens to dovetail nicely. But it was never meant as ANY kind of appeasement for anyone. Much bigger mercury-laced fish to fry out there...
Deb07 at 1:28PM on 01/31/09
Can someone please shut Alice Waters the hell up? She didn't invent organic produce or home gardens (the cavemen had them), and having her shove her food agenda down our throats like a nag just makes us hate her more. All this self-promotion just won't stop. Shut. The. Hell. Up.
Pupster at 12:28PM on 02/02/09
Pupster: I love you. I'm down with organic eating, ecologically friendly and sustainable farming and sourcing, but the whole "Let me run your kitchen cabinet and toss your chef for someone 'better'" letter from Waters & Co. completely irritated me. It was high-handed, presumptuous and more than a bit snobby.
On topic: I'm glad that they've brought Kass into the kitchen. He's familiar with what makes the Obama family happy at the dinner table, and at a time of such huge adjustments, familiarity would be a comfort. And in the end, that's what matters - everyone else needs to butt out.
I also wish that Serious Eats, and foodies who are on the Waters Train, would be more even handed in their reporting and blogging. There are plenty of valid reasons why the White House chef and kitchen staff can't toot their horn about how they cook and what they cook and where they source.
The private kitchens of the White House cannot be the soapbox on which one should endorse healthy, organic eating/sourcing/faming. See this 3-part interview of former White House Chef Walter Scheib: http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2009/01/walter-scheib-interview-part-i-cris.html.
lorelei76 at 2:28PM on 02/02/09
Waters's pigeonholed. Squab says buttonholed. Mr B says butthole.
Feefiefoefum at 2:49PM on 02/04/09
Holy cow since when did a simple senator from Illinois have a personal chef. It's bad enough that the bank thieves had personal chefs and now I find out Obama had a personal chef while he was a US senator. Boy does that smack of elitism. A senator should cook his own meals. These people are so cosseted no wonder they do not have a clue what the rest of the country does.
simplefuntime at 10:10PM on 02/06/09