TWICE a month, President Obama’s senior policy advisers gather at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to hash out strategies for improving the health of the country’s children. Among the assistant secretaries, chiefs of staff and senior aides sits an unlikely participant: a bald, intense young man who happens to be the newest White House chef.
His name is Sam Kass. And when he’s not grilling fish for the first family or tending tomatillos in the White House garden, he is pondering the details of child nutrition legislation, funding streams for the school lunch program and the best tactics to fight childhood obesity.
Part chef and part policy wonk, he is reinventing the role of official gastronome in the Executive Mansion. Indeed, Obama administration officials describe him as a vital conduit to the first family. “How do I get to the first lady, how do I try to transmit ideas and messages to her? Sam Kass,” said Kathleen Merrigan, the deputy agriculture secretary. “He’s been a real ally when we talk about farm to school.”
Mr. Kass, 29, forged a close bond with the Obamas while cooking for them and their children for about two years before they moved to Washington and has golfed with the president on Martha’s Vineyard. Behind the scenes, he attends briefings on child nutrition and health, has vetted nonprofits as potential partners for White House food initiatives and regularly peppers senior staff about policy matters. (“Do we have a toxicologist who specializes in colony collapse disorder?” Mr. Kass asked in a recent e-mail message about the Department of Agriculture’s position on honey bees, Ms. Merrigan recalled.)
While he is steeped in all matters locavore and was a moving force behind the White House garden, Mr. Kass has no formal culinary training and has never run a restaurant or hotel kitchen.
He has baked Swiss chard frittatas for students on the White House lawn, prepared chicken salad with red onions and toasted almonds at the Department of Agriculture’s cafeteria and sprinkled crab meal and ladybugs — instead of chemical fertilizers and pesticides — on the first lady’s garden.
Friends say he cooks primarily for the Obamas, while the executive chef, Cristeta Comerford, handles most formal gatherings.
(People magazine called Mr. Kass one of “Barack’s Beauties” in its list of 100 Most Beautiful people this year.)
“We find ourselves in a fight to salvage a food system that has been ravaged by an approach of quantity over quality,” he wrote. “The industry our society has built around food is harmful and unsustainable.”
Mr. Kass has toned down that kind of talk since he came to the White House in January. These days, he describes big agricultural producers and fertilizer and pesticide companies as “partners,” not obstacles to reform.
Mr. Kass and other officials say improving school lunches and widening access to farmers’ markets for people on government aid will benefit the poor. “He’s often the one who stops the conversation and says, ‘People will do this and won’t do that,’ ” said Jocelyn Frye, Mrs. Obama’s policy director, who has pronounced Mr. Kass’s collard greens and barbecued chicken “very good.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/dining/04kass.html
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People are losing jobs and we need this ‘policy wonk’ why?!
Obama, et al, are SO OUT OF TOUCH!
Does Michelle Obama even know how to cook?!
Thats the more interesting question to ask.Maybe he and Obama were sharing noodles.
So a guy who should be competing on The Next Food Network Star is, instead, vaulted to the position of overseeing almost a half billion dollars.
The deputy agriculture secretary has to go to this schmo to gain access to the White House?
I’ve run out of the capacity to be gobsmacked. And that is something.
Cooking for them for about 2 years before they moved to DC? That goes back to when Malia with 6 and Sasha was 3.
Didn’t I hear Michelle go on this week about her starting to cook one night a week—and then working up from there—so their daughters would have more nutritious meals? Somehow the “I was there as an overworked mom, learning about nutrition for my kids” bit doesn’t quite jive with having a personal chef.
Birds of a feather...