Presidential diners give restaurateurs a big rush

WASHINGTON ― Are presidents good for the restaurant business?

They are if the first families are inclined to dine out, as the Clintons were in their time and the Obamas are now.

Ashok Bajaj credits President Bill Clinton with putting “Indian food on the map” after visiting his Bombay Club here in Washington in August 1993 and eight to 10 more times after that during his two terms.

“There’s definitely a spike in business” after a president dines in your establishment, Bajaj said. “It’s very much like if you get a very good review.

“People want to sit where the president sat,” he added. “So you work up five or six tables where he sat. ...”

Bajaj and other restaurateurs assembled on a panel shared their excitement with food journalists this month about having once, or regularly, served a U.S. president. The journalists were gathered for the Association of Food Journalists’ annual conference.

It isn’t only white-tablecloth establishments that get to roll out the metaphoric red carpet for the commander in chief. And they don’t often get a month’s notice, as Azali did.

Ten days before President-elect Barack Obama was sworn in, he stopped in at Ben’s Chili Bowl with the mayor of Washington. The popular establishment on U St. (once known as “Black Broadway”), open since 1958, had already been made famous by Bill Cosby and other black performers.

Second-generation owner Nizam Ali recalled that a member of the Secret Service walked in that day, pointed to Obama’s picture on a campaign button worn by an employee and said, “The guy on the button is on the way in.” Four minutes later, Obama walked in the door.

Following are a few other Washington-centric tidbits gleaned from the recent conference.

Peace through food?

A gala reception in the high-ceilinged, chandeliered Benjamin Franklin Room of the State Department was the setting for the announcement of a new Diplomatic Culinary Partnership.

Fundamentally, the new initiative targets food as a diplomatic tool. According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in a video address, food is perhaps “the oldest diplomatic tool.”

A 90-strong American Chef Corps, a network of chefs from across the country, has been chosen to enhance diplomacy in various ways: by assisting with State Department meals served to foreign leaders, for example, and by sharing their culinary expertise on personal visits abroad. Among these culinary ambassadors, who volunteer their time, is Kenosha, Wisconsin, native Tony Mantuano, owner of Mangia restaurant in Kenosha and Bar Toma in Chicago. He shares the honor with such culinary luminaries as Rick Bayless, Jose Andres, Andrew Zimmern, Marcus Samuelsson, and current and former White House chefs.

Another aspect of the initiative, which is also supported by the James Beard Foundation, will see 25 culinary arts professionals from other countries schooled in American food culture during an upcoming multistate tour.

“This is just the very, very beginning,” said Sam Kass, White House assistant chef, at the press announcement. “There is so much untapped potential in the power of food.”

The initiative was proposed by U.S. Chief of Protocol Capricia Penavic Marshall. Already, she had inherited and expanded a program called Experience America, by which foreign ambassadors in this country are invited to get “out of the Beltline” and see more of their host country, as well as to sample “food like nothing you can find in D.C.,” Marshall said.

Trips so far have taken ambassadors ― who pay their own way ― to Wyoming, Alaska, Las Vegas and Chicago.

Swedish Ambassador Jonas Hafstrom said he enjoyed the trips to Wyoming and Alaska. In Alaska, he even tried muktuk, or whale blubber. Did he like it?

Um, not really.

Food at the Smithsonian

The focus is American cuisine ― specifically, latter 20th-century American cuisine ― in a new exhibit set to open in November at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

The Julia Child kitchen, first put on display in 2002, is the opener to and driving force behind “Food: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000.”

When the full exhibit opens Nov. 20 ― Thanksgiving week ― visitors will be treated to such cultural “relics” as TV trays, Alice Waters’ bouillabaisse caldron and a 1955 microwave oven the size of a standard gas or electric range.

A culinary walking tour

Finally, a food-themed walking tour from Washington Walks gave participants a glimpse of the history of what is now known as the Penn Quarter district of D.C. Once the city’s thriving downtown, it had slipped into decline and only in the last 10 years or so has been revitalized into a popular center packed with restaurants and other businesses.

Historical curiosities on the tour included a 19th-century “temperance fountain,” a structure donated by a temperance-fervent dentist from San Francisco to offer thirsty citizens free cold water as an alternative to liquor (by all accounts, it didn’t work as he’d intended).

And who knew? The National Archives building sits on the site of what until around 1930 was a thriving public market. The Center Market had room for more than 600 vendors, area farmers, butchers and others. (The growth of suburbs and advent of supermarkets did it in, and the high Victorian building was torn down.)

A taste of the present day included stops at two trendy eateries: Teaism, a popular tea-themed restaurant, and Cowgirl Creamery. The latter, an artisan dairy based in Point Reyes Station, California, was founded and still owned by two Washington, D.C., natives; this is their only other store.

The Cowgirl’s cases showcase their own products, naturally, but include cheeses from elsewhere.

And what should occupy a prime spot at the end of the counter but that Wisconsin artisan favorite: Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville, priced at $31.25 a pound.

By Nancy Stohs

(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

(MCT Information Services)