Former White House chef reveals US presidents’ favourite comfort foods

Cristeta Comerford, a longtime White House executive chef who recently retired after nearly three decades of preparing meals for five presidents and their guests, says first families are “just regular people” when they’re at home in the private living areas of the executive mansion.

“It’s not what you see on the news,” she told The Associated Press in an interview. Preparing the first families’ meals was among Comerford’s many culinary responsibilities. Meals mostly would be prepared in the main kitchen, then finished off in the residence kitchen on the second floor.

“At the end of the day, when you do the family meals upstairs, they’re just regular people at home. They just want a good meal. They want to sit down with their family,” she said. “If they have children, they eat together. And just to see that on a daily basis, it’s not what you see on the news.

“It’s the other side of them that we get to see,” she said.

Comerford, who hung up her apron and chef’s toque in July 2024 after nearly 20 years as top chef and nearly three decades on the kitchen staff, is the longest-serving chef in White House history. Her tenure spanned the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Each of the five families she served approached food differently, Comerford said at a recent White House Historical Association symposium on food and drinks. She was asked whether she’d describe any of the presidents as “real foodies.”

Tables are decorated during a press preview at the White House in Washington, on April 9, 2024, for the State Dinner for Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
File/Associated Press

The Clintons liked healthier meals, Comerford said. Then-first lady Hillary Clinton hired the first American executive chef, Walter Scheib, and had the kitchen avoid serving heavy sauces and creams. She said, “I learned so much” about Southwestern cuisine from Bush, the former Texas governor who liked Tex-Mex food. “We made thousands of tamales for Christmas,” she said of the popular Mexican meal of stuffed corn dough wrapped in a corn husk and steamed until cooked. Comerford got ideas from the vegetable garden Michelle Obama started when she was promoting healthy eating, primarily for children. “We used the garden as kind of like our backbone for our menu development,” she said.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump are “very, very classic eaters,” she said. Mrs. Trump “loved Italian food, so we tend to do the pastas, but light ones.” Comerford didn’t comment on President Trump’s food choices, but he is known to like a well-done steak served with ketchup and fast food. Jill Biden was the first Italian American first lady, and the kitchen did “a lot of Italian food, as well, because she loved Italian food.” Overall, “it’s different for each family,” said Comerford, “but my job as the chef is to execute their style, their likes and their preferences.”

A black-tie state dinner is the highest diplomatic honour the US reserves for its close allies. Comerford presided over 54 of these opulent affairs, including for France and Australia during Trump’s first term. Sometimes, guest chefs were brought in to help. State dinners give presidents the opportunity to bring together hundreds of guests from the worlds of government, politics and other industries for an evening in which the three-course meal, decor and entertainment are designed to help foster relations by dazzling the visiting foreign leader. The first lady’s staff and the social secretary typically have about two months to pull one together.

Comerford said her team started by researching the visiting leader’s likes and dislikes, then she used the information to create a menu using the best of American food while incorporating nuances from the country being recognized. She’d develop at least three different menus. Then came tastings for the first lady to make a final decision. Comerford, 62, started her career tending a salad bar at a Chicago airport hotel before working as a chef at restaurants in Austria and Washington. Scheib, then the White House executive chef, hired her in 1994 for a temporary gig preparing a state dinner for Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s newly elected president.

Cristeta Comerford shows the main course during a preview in the State Dining Room of White House in Washington, on Sept. 24, 2015, for the state dinner of the visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping.
File/Associated Press

Scheib then hired her as an assistant chef in 1995, and she succeeded him a decade later, becoming the first woman and first person of color to permanently hold the executive chef’s position. Comerford is a naturalized US citizen who was born in the Philippines.

Her husband, John Comerford, is a chef, too, and she credits him with sacrificing his career to be present for their daughter so she could thrive in hers. Their daughter is a pastry chef. When Comerford retired, assistant chef Tommy Kurpradit, whose parents are from Thailand, was named interim executive chef. Melania Trump, who worked with Comerford in the first Trump administration, has not named a successor. Comerford said she managed everything with “a lot of prayers,” often said during her hourlong, early morning drive into the White House, but also by being versatile, humble, able to handle chaos and having faith in herself and her team.

“One thing with cooking at the White House, you don’t just do fine dining meals,” she said. “You have to know how to cook eggs and breakfast. You have to know to cook a smashburger.” It also helps to remember that the job is about the family. “There’s no ego in it,” Comerford said.

White House culinary history includes chefs from China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand, as far back as the 19th century, according to Adrian Miller and Deborah Chang, co-authors of a new book, “Cooking to the President’s Taste: Asian Heritage Chefs in White House History.”

Most sharpened their skills through service in the US military. Before Comerford, Pedro Udo, a Filipino trained in the US military, was the first Asian heritage chef to run the White House kitchen after he was promoted from meat chef to head chef in June 1957, according to the book. He prepared meals for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip later that year, and for Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in September 1959 during the Cold War. But his stint ended after less than four years when the new first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, hired acclaimed French chef René Verdon in early 1961.

Miller said the book offers a “unique window” on the presidency. “We get a look at the presidents, but also the presidents got a look at Asian American life in maybe ways that they hadn’t before,” he told the AP in an interview. “And I think, you know, for the presidents that decided to open that window and find out more about the people who were providing, comforting them through amazing food, I think our nation is better for them.”

Associated Press