U.S. presidents have\u00a0a larger-than-life quality. But\u00a0one way presidents get elected is by presenting himself or herself as a common man or woman. And one of the most important ways of doing that is through food.\u00a0That means, for instance, that Bill Clinton famously hammed it up at McDonald\u2019s, where he chowed on\u00a0cheeseburgers. George W. Bush ate\u00a0grilled cheese sandwiches made with Kraft cheese singles and white bread. A\u00a0lot of presidents favored \u201cdown home\u201d fare; Jimmy Carter loved his grits, James Garfield ate squirrel soup, and George H.W. Bush gnawed heartily on Texas barbecue. Donald Trump has already become known as the fast food president. But some presidents made much better choices. For President\u2019s Day, we narrowed down\u00a0the definitive list of top presidential foodies.<\/p>\n
Arthur served less than a full term\u2014he took over after James Garfield died from complications related to an assassination attempt and he\u00a0lost his re-election bid\u2014but he has a reputation for having one of the most refined presidential palates. His White House chef remarked, \u201cIf gourmetship were the chief ingredient in Presidential greatness, our twenty-first president would score near the top,\u201d wrote Poppy Cannon and Patricia Brooks in The Presidents\u2019\u00a0Cookbook<\/em>, published in 1968. President Arthur\u2019s favorite foods included macaroni pie with oysters, Rhode Island eels, and turtle steak.<\/p>\n Teddy Roosevelt may have fostered a cowboy persona, but he was also a champion of consumers. Along with Harvey Washington Wiley, chief chemist of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture, Roosevelt passed the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, which essentially turned\u00a0the Food and Drug Administration\u00a0into the regulatory agency it is today. But Roosevelt was also a notorious eater. In 1906, The Washington Post<\/em> attacked the Roosevelts for dining lavishly at the White House, prompting the administration to correct the paper and tout the president\u2019s simple tastes. However, that\u2019s not the whole story. For the then-Vice President Roosevelt\u2019s 42nd birthday (just before President McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt became the youngest president to serve in the office), he ate a six-course meal consisting of bluepoint oysters; green turtle soup; timbale of peanut ham; crab flake a la newberg; fillet of beef with dickinson green peas and fresh mushrooms sous cloche; quail and bread sauce salad with roman punch and dessert cakes; and lots and lots of coffee.<\/p>\n This one comes as a shock, considering Nixon is probably best known for commandeering the White House limo to go on a search for his favorite snack, cottage cheese, which he ate almost obsessively.\u00a0But Nixon actually had a really solid diet\u00a0and he would balance out eating large meals at state dinners by having light meals served subsequently. Henry Haller, who served as the White House Chef from 1966 to 1987, recounted that Nixon enjoyed rich foods like beef wellington, duckling a l\u2019orange, homard \u00e0 l\u2019am\u00e9ricaine (lobster saut\u00e9ed in oil and tomatoes), and macadamia nuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe best of everything was served\u2014sometimes out of season, often imported,\u201d wrote Cannon and Brooks in\u00a0The Presidents\u2019 Cookbook<\/em>. Hoover\u2019s predecessor Calvin Coolidge ate simple meals, but Hoover was determined to elevate the presidential menu. He enjoyed lobster,\u00a0egg timbales,\u00a0Virginia ham,\u00a0black cherries,\u00a0and gumbo from a small restaurant in Opelousas, Louisiana. And rumor had it that he always went back for seconds.<\/p>\n Jefferson\u2019s reputation as the \u201cfounding foodie\u201d should actually be credited to James Hemings. In 1874, Jefferson went to Paris to take a governmental post. Jefferson was traveling with Hemings, one of the nearly 200 slaves Jefferson owned. France had abolished slavery over 500 years earlier, and Hemings could have easily\u00a0gone to court and won his freedom, but Jefferson struck a deal with Hemings in which he would offer Hemings his freedom if Hemings trained in French cooking and teach it to a successor in America. Hemings studied in Paris under a caterer, pastry chef, and chef for five years, and he was eventually freed in 1796. In 2012, author Thomas J. Craughwell recounted this story in the book Thomas Jefferson’s Cr\u00e8me Br\u00fbl\u00e9e: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America<\/em>. Hemings\u2019 recipe for snow eggs, a difficult-to-make custard, remains one of the most famous presidential desserts.<\/p>\n In the White House, Obama was ever the everyman\u2014his faves included guacamole, chili, pizza, and burgers\u2014but he could be just as much a foodie as any of the presidents before him. He enjoyed eating out at Rick Bayless\u2019\u00a0Topolobampo, a cocina-style Mexican restaurant in Chicago, where he would enjoy chilaquiles and Yucatecan roast pork. When in New York, Obama dined at Estela, one of Bon App\u00e9tit<\/em>\u2019s Best New Restaurants in America in 2014, and Marcus Samuelsson\u2019s Red Rooster. In D.C., the Obamas would eat at\u00a0Wolfgang Puck\u2019s\u00a0The Source and\u00a0Rose\u2019s Luxury, the latter being another of Bon App\u00e9tit\u2019<\/em>s top restaurants. And he\u2019s definitely the only president to ever eat at Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo, made famous by the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi<\/em>. And for that, Obama earns the nod as most refined presidential palate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. presidents have\u00a0a larger-than-life quality. But\u00a0one way presidents get elected is by presenting himself or herself as a common man or woman. And one of the most important ways of doing that is through food.\u00a0That means, for instance, that Bill Clinton famously hammed it up at McDonald\u2019s, where he chowed on\u00a0cheeseburgers. George W. Bush ate\u00a0grilled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}5) Theodore Roosevelt (1901\u20131909)\u00a0<\/h2>\n
4) Richard Nixon (1969\u20131974)<\/h2>\n
3) Herbert Hoover (1929\u20131933)<\/h2>\n
2) Thomas Jefferson (1801\u20131809)*<\/h2>\n
1) Barack Obama (2009\u20132017)<\/h2>\n