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Henry Haller, longest-serving White House executive chef, dies at 97 (nationthailand.com)

Henry Haller, longest-serving White House executive chef, dies at 97

InternationalDec 19. 2020Henry Haller is pictured in 1976 with cook and TV personality Julia Child. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by James A. Parcell Photo by: James A. Parcell — The Washington Post 

By Special to The Washington Post · Olesia Plokhii 

Henry Haller, the longest-serving White House executive chef in the history of the residence, who planned and executed countless extravagant banquets, three wedding receptions and more than 250 state dinners for five presidents, died Nov. 7 at his home in Gaithersburg, Md. He was 97.

His wife, Carole Haller, confirmed the death and said there was no specific cause.

Haller was a Swiss-born French chef who joined the White House in 1966 after impressing President Lyndon B. Johnson years earlier with his cooking at New York City’s Sheraton-East Hotel. He remained at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. late into the Reagan administration, mastering the tastes of five first families over a span of 21 years and pulling off impressive culinary feats on short notice.

A consummate professional who was never known to gossip about what he saw or heard at the White House, Haller catered to the tastes of the first families, whether asked to prepare deluxe continental cuisine or simple homestyle American meals.

“It’s quite simple, really,” he told the Albany Times Union in 2002. “You keep your mouth shut. There are no prima donnas at the White House except the president of the United States. . . . Some chefs like to tell the guests what to eat. It’s not like that at the White House. They tell you what they want to eat and you do it.”

For Johnson, that was Texan food and tapioca pudding. For the family of Richard M. Nixon, it was classic French dishes, red snapper and broiled lamb chops. Haller said the Fords enjoyed roast beef cooked with whole onions as well as red cabbage with pork chops; Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter liked fried chicken, ham, okra and string beans; and Ronald and Nancy Reagan valued variety and beautiful presentation.

Trained in classical French cuisine in Switzerland, Haller came to the White House after René Verdon – the French-born chef brought in by the Kennedys in 1961 – quit as executive chef in 1965 in a dispute with Johnson over the president’s food preferences and the sudden arrival of frozen and canned vegetables in the White House pantry.

Deciding on menus often required consultation with the first ladies. The biggest challenge for Haller came from Nancy Reagan, whom he described as the most involved and particular first lady he worked with. She insisted that Haller and his staff cook the planned meal before important functions, and she would suggest changes to the taste and appearance of the foods.

“We take pictures with a Polaroid so the staff knows how they are to be done,” Haller told the New York Times in 1987. “With the Reagans you have to be more creative.”

Haller also admitted to two occasions on which he was reprimanded. The first was when he told the news media that Nixon liked to mix his own martinis before dinner; the second was when he failed to remove the strings from the green beans he served Johnson. That night, after dinner was served, the butler told Haller the president wanted to see him.

“I went in, and he had some strings from the beans in his hand,” Haller told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “He handed them to me and said, ‘I saved these for you.’ “

The rest of his employment, however, was marked by one culinary coup after another. In 1973, he produced a dinner for 1,300 people honoring returned Vietnam prisoners of war. The event was held under a giant tent, with a menu that included supreme of seafood Neptune – an elaborate seafood salad – roast sirloin and strawberry mousse. Because the White House didn’t have enough ovens and stoves, much of the cooking took place at the nearby Mayflower Hotel.

Another success came during the bicentennial in 1976, when Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II visited the White House of Gerald R. Ford. Haller served – just as a first course for 250 people – 25 four-pound lobsters in a 50-gallon steamer. During that year, Haller was responsible for preparing several formal dinners each week and often worked 18-hour days. In 1978, for a celebratory dinner after the signing of the Camp David Accords, Haller had just one week to pull off an event for 1,300 guests of the Carters.

Henry Haller is pictured with Julia Child in 1976. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by James A. Parcell

Photo by: James A. Parcell — The Washington Post

There were also times when demands on the White House kitchen were minimal. When King Faisal bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia visited, for example, he brought his own food in briefcases. “I think he had cottage cheese that night,” Haller said.

One of the chef’s greatest triumphs was a lobster mousse made from his own mold – thanks to a sheet-metal worker on staff – for French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in 1986.

“I put the lobster mousse on a big china platter and glazed the mousse with aspic,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1988. “On one side I placed 12 medallions of lobster decorated with truffles. On the other, I made a floral design with carrots, truffles, leeks and cherry tomatoes. It looks like a bouquet. On the outside edge, I had half quail eggs covered with caviar and standing in little cucumber cups. Sounds good, no?”

Born Henri Haller in Altdorf, Switzerland, on Jan. 10, 1923, he was the son of a French mother and a Swiss father who worked in a factory. He helped his mother cook and tend to her vegetable garden, and developed a flair for cooking. When he was 14, his father planted the idea of making his passion a career.

“Why don’t you be a chef,” Haller recalled his father saying. “You can travel all over the world. And you will never have to worry about a job. People everywhere have to eat.”

At 16, he did a culinary apprenticeship at the Park Hotel in Davos, Switzerland, where he learned the art of the mashed potato and studied French, German and Italian cooking.

Over the next decade, he worked at top hotels and restaurants in Bern and Lucerne, Switzerland, and practiced his English. When he was 25, he moved to Montreal to work for the Ritz-Carlton and then arrived in New York City in 1951.

He spent several years at a country club and then at Hampshire House near Central Park. In 1962, he left for the top chef position at the Sheraton-East Hotel, where his food impressed Johnson.

After leaving the White House in 1987, Haller published “The White House Family Cookbook,” filled with dozens of recipes. He later created menus for Norwegian Cruise Lines and an assisted living company, partnered with a supermarket to create a line of gourmet foods and was featured in 1996 in a PBS cooking series called “The Presidential Palate.”

In 1954, he married Carole Itjen. In addition to his wife, of Gaithersburg, survivors include four children, Robert Haller of Palm Harbor, Fla., Richard Haller of Highland, Calif., Susan Capps of Gastonia, N.C., and Nancy Bender of Holly Springs, N.C.; and five grandchildren.

One of Haller’s most vividly remembered days at the White House was when Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974. That morning, Haller said, the president walked into the kitchen barefoot and wearing pajamas and asked for corned beef hash and a poached egg. Nixon then shook Haller’s hand and said, “Chef, I have dined all over the world, but your food is the best.”

Despite bearing witness to an intimate side of American history, Haller said there was very little talk of politics in his kitchen. He said his job was to provide a sense of normalcy amid the tumult of presidential life.

“You’re an escape from all of that in some ways,” he told the Gerald R. Ford Oral History Project in 2010. “I mean, you provide a normal environment. A normal environment to the last day. That was our job.”

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Biden gets vaccine Monday, rethinks West Wing setup (nationthailand.com)

Biden gets vaccine Monday, rethinks West Wing setup

InternationalDec 19. 2020President-elect Joe Biden speaks at a “Get Ready to Vote” rally with Georgia Democratic Senate nominees Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff on Dec. 15 in Atlanta. His audience was seated in cars. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Joshua Lott Photo by: Joshua Lott — The Washington Post Location: Atlanta, United States 

By The Washington Post · Annie Linskey

President-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, plan to begin their course of coronavirus vaccinations Monday, after the recent infection of two people in his orbit, including a senior adviser, brought the pandemic closer than before to the former vice president and senior members of his team.

The Biden team also is rethinking how to organize the president-elect’s West Wing staff, which will take office amid what is expected to be a bleak and dangerous winter because of the pandemic. The new administration does not plan to have its full staff work out of the typically cramped White House offices immediately after taking office Jan. 20 because of medical concerns, officials said Friday.

The outgoing Trump administration, which has demonstrated far less adherence to its own medical team’s coronavirus guidance than Biden’s team, has suffered through several outbreaks of the virus, with victims including President Donald Trump, his wife and son, and many senior officials and Cabinet members.

The announcement of the Bidens’ pending inoculation and curbs on attendance at the White House after his inauguration illustrate the extraordinary difficulty that the pandemic has added to planning for a transfer of power and launching a new government, layering significantly more complication and risk to an already fraught process.

During the transition, many of Biden’s meetings have been conducted virtually, with only a few staff members, stationed in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., who regularly see the president-elect in person.

That followed the pattern set in the campaign, during which Biden spent long stretches hunkered down in his Wilmington home to protect against catching the virus as it rampaged across the country. Trump, who was diagnosed with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in October, regularly mocked Biden for his preventive behavior and, when he emerged, for routinely wearing a mask. Neither the president nor his senior aides regularly wear masks or demonstrate social distancing practices.

In deciding when to receive the two-shot regimen required for the coronavirus vaccine, Biden has had to weigh his own health risks against the politically tricky image of skipping ahead of some health-care workers to receive an inoculation.

Biden, who at 78 will be the oldest president ever inaugurated, is in a high-risk category because of his age. His incoming medical adviser, Anthony Fauci ,had recommended that he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris receive vaccinations, along with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Pence and his wife, Karen, received their shots Friday in a televised event.

Biden has set a goal of distributing 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office. He also wants Americans to wear masks during this period as a way to reduce community spread of the virus.

Biden’s brief trip to Georgia on Tuesday – the only time he has boarded an airplane since winning the election – clearly illustrated the risks he’s facing in delaying the shots: Within days of the stop at least two people involved in the visit tested positive for the coronavirus.

One was an unnamed reporter who covered the trip but did not fly on the same plane as Biden, nor come into close contact with the president-elect. Biden did, however, approach the traveling press corps before taking off from Wilmington for Atlanta. Biden and the reporters wore masks as they spoke.

The second was Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., who will become a senior adviser to Biden in the White House. Biden’s transition team, in a statement released Thursday, said the president-elect was never in “close contact” with Richmond as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Given the circumstances, Biden did not plan to self-quarantine.

Richmond’s office referred questions to the Biden transition team. Biden’s team declined to provide any additional details Friday about their contact, its duration or whether it occurred indoors or outside.

Biden traveled to Georgia to campaign for two U.S. Senate candidates vying against Republican incumbents in Jan. 5 runoff elections. The outcome of the race will determine control of the Senate, in which Republicans currently hold a 50-to-48 advantage. Two Democratic wins would flip control, as Harris would become the tiebreaker once she is sworn into office.

Biden spoke briefly at an outdoor car rally in Atlanta and did not appear on that stage with Richmond. Richmond traveled to the event separately from Biden.

“We have covid protocols in place that everybody abides by who has any contact or attends any events with the president-elect,” Jen Psaki, a Biden-Harris transition spokeswoman, said during a Friday news briefing.

Biden regularly takes coronavirus tests. His latest results, from a test taken Thursday, were negative.

Psaki said that Richmond’s status did not change the timing of Biden’s vaccination.

But the plans had appeared to have been in flux. CNN reported Wednesday that Biden would receive his vaccination early next week, although Biden’s team told The Washington Post only that it would be “as soon as next week” and would not commit to a specific timeline.

Psaki declined to immediately say when Richmond last had a negative coronavirus test. Richmond’s office also did not respond to multiple requests to explain when he last tested negative.

The reporter who tested positive covered Biden on Monday and Tuesday. Reporters who cover Biden at specific events must show they have tested negative at a transition testing site before they are permitted near him. They also are required to wear masks.

Biden also wears masks to his events, and sometimes has given entire speeches wearing one. But he occasionally pulls his mask down when people have difficulty understanding him. After stepping off the outdoor stage in Atlanta on Tuesday, Biden briefly pulled down his mask to yell something to a supporter and then put it back in place.

Biden’s vaccination will be done in public in Delaware, but his aides declined to provide details about exactly when or where the shots would be given. Biden and his wife will receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Psaki said.

Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will start their course of vaccinations after Christmas, Psaki said. Biden and Harris have separate medical teams and Psaki said the quartet was spacing out the inoculations based on advice from their doctors.

Pence and his wife also received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It was administered by Walter Reed National Military Medical Center staff in a room in the White House complex Friday.

The pandemic has cast a pall over one of the typical moves for any incoming administration: jockeying for valuable West Wing real estate. In the past two administrations, the crowded conditions have led aides at times to share desks.

“We expect that everybody who would traditionally be – and historically be – working out of the West Wing, probably will not be working out of the West Wing on January 20th and January 21st,” Psaki said.

The new administration will “abide by the guidance and direction by our medical experts and doctors” in determining who will be in the building and when, she said.

Biden plans to announce his selection for additional administration posts next week, but Psaki declined to say whether all of the Cabinet slots will be announced by Christmas, which the Biden team had hoped to do.

“It’s all based on when decision-making is made and we want to give him the time and space to do that,” Psaki said. She said that Biden’s team does expect to name the first 100 appointments by the new year.

So far Biden has named 19 members of his Cabinet, but some big slots remain open, including who will lead the departments of Justice, Labor and Education and who will lead the CIA.

On Saturday, he is due to publicly announce members of his climate and energy teams, including his nominee for interior secretary, Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., who if confirmed by the Senate would be the first Native American to serve in the Cabinet.

In addition to Haaland, Biden will introduce North Carolina environmental regulator Michael Regan, who would be the first Black man to head the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as Obama administration veteran Brenda Mallory to serve as the first Black chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm will be named by Biden as his nominee for energy secretary.

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The Washington Post’s Matt Viser contributed to this report.