A block off Dupont Circle at the corner of New Hampshire Street Avenue and Q Street sits the Women's National Democratic Club, a late-19th century Victorian building with Arts-and-Crafts touches. The Club, founded in 1922, is an historic D.C. venue for Democratic women that has broadened its affiliation over the decades to all genders, if not all parties. In 1994, as White House Chef on travel, we were responsible for a medium-high profile holiday event for several hundred-plus guests: the Christmas tea of then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Through the First Lady's sizeable staff, we began planning a month ahead of the event, which was scheduled for 4:00 p.m. on a December weekday. The main menu included traditional tea sandwiches such as cucumber on white bread and smoked salmon on rye, as well as savory profiteroles filled with chicken or egg salad; beverages included homemade fruit punch, as well as coffee and tea service. Pastries were prepared by the White House pastry chef. One of our significant responsibilities was making a gingerbread model of the White House. We were given plans for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that allowed us to construct--and we do mean construct--a copy to scale that was about three-by-four feet. Ten days prior, the First Lady's chief of staff delivered a final guest count of 250 to us and to the Secret Service. In the meantime, we spent about a week building the gingerbread version of the White House in the club's kitchen; getting it to the display area was going to be another substantial undertaking.
Presidential- and First-Lady-level social events typically require a two-hour window of readiness on either side. The reason for the window on the "far" side of the scheduled time is the need for flexibility in such public figures' hour-by-hour schedules; we never knew what political urgency might necessitate the rare speeding-up or far more common slowing-down. Either case always required keeping foods at proper temperatures much, much longer than necessary--so long that the trick was planning and preparing suitable menus while maximizing flavor and texture. Fortunately, the First Lady's Christmas tea menu included foods served at room temperature.
The two-hour window on the "near" side was necessary for the Secret Service to come through the venue with a detail team, including search dogs, for their security sweep, and then "shut down" the required "perimeter". All guests, having already provided personal information for pre-screening purposes, began arriving an hour ahead of time in order to go through magnetometers. Once through, they waited for the First Lady's arrival. And waited. And waited. We weren't allowed to serve so much as a crumpet until she got there, which made for an awkward hour of social business indeed.
FLOTUS arrived by motorcade, accompanied by her sizeable entourage of staff, security, press corps, and other handlers. Once inside the room, she and her staff maneuvered strictly and entirely within an enclosed area that permitted both access to and protection from the guests. While Mrs. Clinton had access to all 250 guests, her staff had access to on-site briefs about each one. A pre-selected, pre-security-screened waiter from the club's staff remained at hand to serve the First Lady on the say-so of a staff member who shadowed her for just such purposes; he brought the occasional and somewhat obligatory cup of punch or tea sandwich to the First Lady's side. In all photos of such events, the ropes and stanchions defining this area are cropped out; at a state dinner like the recent and now-notorious one for the Indian prime minister, they are considered inappropriate.
It took about an hour for FLOTUS to make the circuit of the entire room. Once all the guests were acknowledged, the First Lady, still within the cordon, stepped to a podium in the vicinity of the Gingerbread White House to thank all the guests for their support of the Democratic Party. Mrs. Clinton was brought through the kitchen where, as was her custom, she personally thanked us and the staff; we always appreciated this touch of class.
Then she and her team exited, as usual, through the venue's rear entrance, going back through the guests being out of the question. The guests remained in the reception area (typically, guests for presidential-level functions are held from exiting until the motorcade has cleared the secured area) and departed within a half-hour or so of the First Lady's exit. What no one, not the First Lady, not her various staff members, and not one of the guests realized was that, while about a half-dozen people were in the process of moving the Gingerbread White House from the kitchen to the display area the morning of the event, the two east columns of the South Portico crumbled, resulting in the collapse of the entire portico. We finished moving the whole thing into place, however, and for the rest of the morning two chefs repaired the structure with Styrofoam and frosting. The Gingerbread White House remained at the club for the rest of the month. If such a confection is being assembled for the Obamas this year, we can't help wondering if a gingerbread version of Tariq and Michaela Salahi are positioned just outside that South Portico and are waiting to get in...
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