Obama's Red Scare - Hates Beets, Loves Spicy Food
What are Barack Obama's "friends" and "foes" when it comes to food? Here's a New York Times article detailing that question:
"In the coming months, as President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, pack their bags for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and then set up a new household there, we'll be learning more about their style and tastes, and that applies to matters culinary as well as sartorial and decorative.
Already, our education is beginning.
And we now know this: the president-elect would recoil at one of the starters on quite possibly three quarters of the "new American" menus around Manhattan.
Mr. Obama doesn't like beets.
A story that The Associated Press released over the weekend quoted him saying: "I always avoid eating them."
And the story cast beets in the role of broccoli under the first Bush administration: as a perfectly lovely vegetable suddenly demonized at the highest levels of government, the innocent victim of an executive disorder.
What, in contrast, does Mr. Obama relish?
According to the A.P. story, datelined Chicago and written by Deanna Bellandi, he's fond of Mexican food in general, of chili, and of what the story identified as "hand-crafted pastas," which it said are on the menu at one of the Obamas' favorite Chicago restaurants, Spiaggia. Note: the new chef at A Voce in Manhattan, Missy Robbins, who started in September, was previously the executive chef at Spiaggia.
Mr. Obama has, according to the A.P., "a weakness for chips and salsa and tends to put hot sauce on everything."
"At Dooky Chase's Creole restaurant in New Orleans," the story continued, "he offended longtime owner Leah Chase by pouring hot sauce all over the gumbo she offered to fatten him up."
But stories about presidential eating — about any political eating — must of course be read with a soupçon of skepticism. Politicians and their handlers give careful thought to which dietary details they release and which they don't, knowing that many people indeed extrapolate from what a person eats to whom he or she is.
For example, Mr. Obama was ridiculed by some for bemoaning the high price of Whole Foods arugula while campaigning for the Democratic nomination.
He has been ribbed by others for watching his weight too closely and steering too fastidiously clear of sloppy, greasy foods.
He'll be managing the image he wants to project and he'll be mindful of the example he wants to set when he cops to given hungers or concedes certain dislikes.
Is there a message in his bashing of beets?
The floor is open."
Link: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/obamas-red-scare/?ref=dining
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