Obama's Bring Their Personal Chef to White House

Hail to the Chef: Locavore Sam Kass to Assist Cristeta Comerford

Jan 31, 2009 Larry Ervin

28-year-old Chicago native brings emphasis on healthy cooking using local and sustainable ingredients to the White House kitchen.

Sam Kass served as personal chef for the Obamas in their Hyde Park, Chicago home. The University of Chicago graduate trained in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Europe before returning to Chicago to work at the chic West Loop restaurant, Avec, and then found his own personal chef business, Inevitable Table.

Kitchen Cabinet Appointment

Kass will join the White House kitchen assistant to the Executive Chef, Cristeta Comerford, a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, announced Wednesday, January 28th. Comerford has been in the White House Kitchen 13 years, starting during the Clinton administration. Laura Bush elevated her to executive chef, the first woman to hold that position.

Chef Kass will not be the only cook preparing the family’s meals, Lelyveld, said, but “he knows what they like and he happens to have a particular interest in healthy food and local food.”

The Politics of Food

Kass is no stranger to the politics of food. As his boss at Avec, chef-owner Paul Kahan, says: ”The cool thing about Sam is that he’s very active, very involved with issues that relate to food. His goal has always been to improve the world from a food standpoint.”

Chef Kass told “In These Times” magazine last year: “Not only is there an unconscionable amount of people who remain hungry, there’s even a larger population, mostly poor, who are faced with obesity, diabetes and various other problems from overabundance.”

Remaking the Soup Kitchen

One of Kass' projects was “Re-thinking Soup,” a weekly event at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum in Chicago, dedicated to the work of the 19th century social reformer. Kass made soup every Tuesday to bring together farmers, activists, researchers. He described it as 'a communal event where we will eat delicious, healthy soup and have fresh, organic conversation about many of the urgent social, cultural, economic and environmental food issues that we should be addressing.”

Chicago chef and food historian Barbara Kuck, recalls:

“It was amazing how you could just have this one bowl of soup and it was like nothing you had ever eaten. Sam would buy the ingredients from the farmers’ market. He is very accessible and down to earth, very enthusiastic about organic food and all the food issues that we are facing.”

Criticizes School Lunch Program

Last May, over a meal of locally-produced beef and barley soup, Mr. Kass lamented the sorry state of the National School Lunch Program that provides low-cost or free lunches to schoolchildren. What gets served up to kids, he noted, is influenced by government agricultural subsidies. As a result, the meals are low in vegetables and disproportionately high in fat, additives, preservatives and high-fructose corn syrup.

In accepting the post, Kass is required to sever his relationship with Invevitable Table. At the time of publication, the Inevitable Table's website has already been inactivated. Prior to that, it has been reported to contain this statement: "We believe that people have a stake in each other's health. This link is what binds us together as families, communities and a nation. Nowhere are we more powerfully bound together than in the daily cultivation and preparation of food."

White House Kitchen Sets Example

Michelle Obama's choice should please Alice Waters who, among others, has lobbied the Obamas to set an example for the rest of the country by emphasizing food that is healthy, local and sustainable.

As Aaron French points out in his “Civil Eats” blog, Michelle Obama “follows the lead of many a First Lady who have pioneered healthy food policy, often against their Presidential husbands’ wishes. For example, it was Hillary who instigated the White House rooftop garden... Eleanor Rosevelt who planted the Victory Garden on the White House lawn.” It has also been reported that Laura Bush insisted that the White House use organic ingredients, although she didn't feel the need to publicize the fact at the time.

The copyright of the article Obama's Bring Their Personal Chef to White House in Food Trends is owned by Larry Ervin. Permission to republish Obama's Bring Their Personal Chef to White House in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

White House Kitchen