|
I cooked for a president the other night. Mealtime becomes a
presidential moment"I ate like a horse," Clinton said, kindly
By Betty Shimabukuro
bshimabukuro@starbulletin.comOK, he's an ex-president, and I did not actually cook in the sense of applying heat to food, but I did chop the tomatoes that went into his appetizer, and I marinated his shrimp. And I have it on good authority, from informed sources (who served his table), that he actually ate this dish.
So in a larger sense of the term, I cooked for a president the other night. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
On Friday night a group of food writers, of which I am one, showed up in the kitchen of Bali-by-the-Sea at the Hilton Hawaiian Village for an evening activity cheerfully named "Dinner with the Hawaii Regional Food Writers." In short, we each contributed a dish to a four-course menu that was offered to Bali diners. The reasoning behind this on the part of the Hilton is not clear to me, but as it offered us a chance to gain insight on the restaurant process, we were game. Plus, we got to wear chef coats.
Friday also happened to be the night that Bill Clinton came to dinner at Bali. At first we were told he would be eating at the Golden Dragon, the Hilton's Chinese restaurant, but about 6 p.m. came word that, no, he would be eating at Bali. In two hours.
Much grinning ensued in the kitchen. Funny thing about presidential celebrity, but if a man's been seated in the Oval Office, the chance to enter his personal orbit makes people giddy, no matter what they think about his politics and/or ethics.
The four of us food writers actually posed for a group photo, trying to leave a gap through which Clinton would be visible in the background. As subterfuge it was about as transparent as Saran Wrap, but the Secret Service did not jump us. (For that matter, the Secret Service did not jump when the Hilton's weekly fireworks display exploded on the beach just a few steps away from Bali, an open-air restaurant.)
Alas, our paparazzi attempt failed. Clinton appears as a dark blob partially obscured by one writer's head. The rest of us are squinting or have red-eye, so you won't be seeing that photo reprinted here.
For the record, the dishes we served to the presidential table were (in order of appearance): Kauai shrimp with a salsa made of red and yellow tomatoes (my dish), Scottish salmon by Jo McGarry of the Star-Bulletin's Food for Thought advertising section, Portuguese-style ahi by Wanda Adams of the Advertiser and mango crisp by free-lancer Joan Namkoong. We are proud to say it was all quite edible.
The morning of the event, my husband had looked up from the newspaper to say, "Hey, Clinton is staying at the Hilton. Maybe he'll eat your dinner. Ha ha."
Yeah, well, at 9 p.m. I called him to say, "Bill Clinton is eating my food, ha ha," to which my devoted life partner said, "He is NOT." To which I said, "He is too, and I can't pick you up now because maybe I'll get to meet him if I hang around."
As Clinton was leaving, I did get to shake his hand. He said thanks for dinner, and I said, "Thank you for eating," which in retrospect was pretty stupid. But then HE said, "I ate like a horse." And that's on the Top 10 list of compliments you can pay a cook, even a cook du jour.
So ends my brush with presidentiality. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Click for online
calendars and events.
