Culinary Opportunity

I may have found my next move. What could be so difficult cooking for George W., some hot wings,barbeque,freedom fries,plenty of pork but no leeks.

August 14, 2005

In a Reality Cook-Off, Winner Gets to Be First Chef

By MARIAN BURROS
It is a reality cooking show with a very limited but influential audience.
More than six months since Laura Bush asked the executive chef to pick up his knives and leave the White House kitchen, she has interviewed a handful of candidates for the position but has yet to choose one. And because these are closed auditions with a few select guests at the tables, the search has become part of Washington's favorite parlor game: laying bets on the choice for a prominent job.
Since Walter Scheib III left in February, names have surfaced, disappeared and surfaced again as the White House staff, one of the city's best rumor mills, drops hints that change daily.
Two candidates, one from Texas and one already in the White House kitchen, seem to be on everyone's lists. But in the spirit of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court nominee who appeared to come out of the blue, there are unmentioned chefs high on the White House list.
The best-known candidates, though, have obvious advantages. Chris Ward is the chef at Mercury Grill, a restaurant in Dallas that serves rack of veal as well as crabmeat enchiladas. A self-proclaimed conservative who supports the administration, Mr. Ward was summoned to the White House last month to prepare a second tasting for the Bushes.

But the executive chef does a lot of cooking just for the first family. Mrs. Bush has said she wants someone who cooks American food, but also someone who can make a mean enchilada as well as the more complex interior Mexican food that she prefers, like mole. And the chef had better know how to make the president's favorite cheeseburgers.
Whomever the Bushes choose "may not be the best chef they can possibly find," said Richard Hamilton, another candidate, "but the one with whom they are most comfortable."
The next chef knows that the pay will not match the prestige of the position. One reason it has remained open so long is that Lea Berman, Mrs. Bush's social secretary, had hoped to snag a high-profile chef, according to some of the candidates.
That effort had to be abandoned: there is little incentive to leave a high six-figure income and the possibility of lucrative endorsements, book contracts and speaking engagements to become what is essentially a private chef with the occasional state dinner thrown in, and for a salary of $80,000 to $100,000.
One person mentioned as a candidate, Eric Ziebold, the chef at CityZen in Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel, has superior credentials: he was chef de cuisine at Thomas Keller's French Laundry in the Napa Valley in California. But he was not interested in the job (he would not say whether he was asked directly or indirectly). "It's not a good career move," Mr. Ziebold said.
Still, plenty of chefs were interviewed, with only a few asked to cook for the Bushes. Mr. Ward and Ms. Comerford have emerged as the favorites, among insiders.

Although the candidates have been asked to keep mum about the selection process, and they are aware that the wrong word may remove them from consideration, information continues to leak out. As a White House employee, Ms. Comerford, 41, has refused to provide anything beyond the culinary world's equivalent of name, rank and serial number. "You know the rules of the house," she said in a quiet but firm voice.
She politely declined to say anything more than that she was a candidate, and that she had worked at the ANA Hotel, now the Fairmont, in Washington.
"She's a tiny woman but she carries a big club," Mr. Mesnier said.
Mr. Scheib said: "She has a fine palate and a fine eye. She's not just a great female chef, she's a great chef."
But people's stock goes up and down. Two months ago, culinary tea leaf readers reasoned that Mr. Hamilton, formerly of the Spiced Pear in Newport, R.I., had been anointed. He was seen having dinner at Palena, a restaurant owned by Frank Ruta, a former White House chef, with the second in command in the White House usher's office, Daniel Shanks, and the new White House pastry chef, Thaddeus R. DuBois.

For one of the tasting meals for the Bushes, Mr. Hamilton, classically trained in France, served crab two ways (a salad and a crab cake); strip loin Kobe-like beef from Texas with a homemade Worcestershire sauce and a béarnaise emulsion; a duxelles of wild mushrooms in a lattice of squash and zucchini; heirloom tomato salad with tomato sorbet; and tomato gelée and crispy pancetta.
Mr. Hamilton is not even sure he wants the job. "My wife and I decided we would not make any decisions until I see if the job is offered," he said. "I know the base salary and that there is no overtime pay anymore and that is very tough to live on that in Washington. You can make a lot more elsewhere."

Self-taught, Mr. Ward cooks American food with classic French underpinnings, as well as Mexican.
It was not long before the dishes that Mr. Ward prepared for the Bushes in April became public knowledge. For one of his recent regular Saturday cooking classes, he prepared a menu he called "A Night at the White House": Olive oil poached salmon; rack of veal; pear, arugula, gorgonzola and glazed pecan salad; and crackling chicken.
For his other tastings at the White House he served black cod with foie gras and miso sauce; cannelloni with homemade ricotta and lobster foam; sweetbreads and gnocchi; beef three ways (braised short ribs, filet with dynamite sauce, peppered sirloin); pommes Anna; roast rack of veal; and jalapeño cheese grits.
Some of the dishes were on the restaurant's menu: they are skillfully executed and full of flavor, but not avant-garde, the last thing on the minds of the White House.
Mr. Ward compares his food to that served at Gramercy Tavern in New York, "but without the 40 people in the kitchen," he said. "I can cook like Per Se," a reference to Mr. Keller's four-star restaurant in New York, but he added, "that's not what's needed here."
Upscale or down-home, Mr. Ward may not fulfill his White House dream. Another chef may be the most serious candidate. Mrs. Berman has talked to Patrick O'Connell, the chef and a co-owner of the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, about someone who had worked in his kitchen. Mr. O'Connell refused to divulge the person's name, sending word that the White House has asked him not to do so.
The cook-off continues.