Dining at the
T
his month we begin a
three-part excerpt from
Dining at the White House—
From the President’s Table
to Yours, a sizzling new
book by former White House Chef,
John Moeller. In his book, Chef
Moeller pulls the curtain back
and dishes out some of the most
memorable likes and dislikes
of our nation’s top leaders and
their families and captures over
100 mouth-watering White
House recipes.
The book has won two gold awards;
the Independent Book Publishers
Association (IBPA) Benjamin
Franklin award for Best Cookbook
of the Year (2014) and the 2014
Independent Publisher’s (IPPY)
Award for Best Celebrity Memoir
of the year.
Our three-part series covers
Part-1 of the book—The Road
to the White House
From his early years Chef Moeller
always had a passion for cooking.
Eventually, it inspired him to make
a journey to France, driven by the
feeling that “there was something
more out there.” In the first part
of the book, The Road to the White
House, he describes his own
culinary journey as a chef, and how
this spontaneous visit to France
turned into a two-year adventure
during which he lived with the
local people, worked in the
vineyards during the grape
harvest, and had the opportunity
to gain a deep understanding of
the French approach to cooking and
its strong connection to regional
styles and fresh local ingredients.
This month we join Chef Moeller
as he develops his passion for
cheffing and pursues his training
at the prestigious Johnson and
Wales University in Providence,
Rhode Island. After a couple of
years working in the area he set
off on a spontaneous trip to France
that plunged him into a new life
living with a French family in the
Burgundy Region, working the local
grape harvest in Meursault and
exploring the regional cuisine.
Dining at the White House—
From the President’s Table
to Yours
A Taste for the Business
How does a kid from the heart of
Pennsylvania Dutch country end up
cooking for international heads of
state at the White House?
I’ve always had a great passion
for cooking. I remember early on,
in high school, thinking about
taking culinary classes. My parents
had bought me an intriguing book
called The Great Chefs of France,
and I believe cheffing is how it was
worded. I was wowed by
descriptions of the painstaking
effort chefs would go through and
how they dedicated their lives to
producing quality meals. As my own
career as a chef developed, I would
often think back to that book and
I would wonder, What’s the next
level? How do I get to that point?
I started my own career at the
Willow Street Vo-Tech (now the
Lancaster County Career and
Technology Center) in Willow
Street, Pennsylvania, and then
went on to the Culinary School
at Johnson & Wales University
in Providence, Rhode Island.
On graduation day at Johnson &
Wales in 1981, one of my teachers
offered us graduates an invitation
to join in a trip to Europe. It would
start in England, then on to
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and
finally to France. In all, we would
spend two weeks traveling.
I’d never been to Europe, so
everything was new, and exploring
the culi-nary aspect of it was very
intriguing. We ate at a variety of
restaurants, and we experienced
many new and different things
there. Without a doubt, that
heightened my interest and laid the
groundwork for my work experience
in France that was to come later.
Before we headed up north to
Scotland, we stayed in London for
a couple of days. My first meal in
England was at a small local
restaurant, and I remember having
a mushroom soup. I thought, Oh, my
God! I’ve never tasted anything like
this before! And I talked to someone
at the restaurant, trying to get a
little insight. “What was in that?
It was so good! Wow, there’s
something different here. How can
I learn that?” And, tasting some
dishes that were different from
what I’d ever had back in the States
was part of what compelled me, a
couple of years later, to say, “I want
to go back there and study how
they do it.”
As I later learned, it was a
combination of cooking and
ingredients. Maybe it was just a
white mushroom, but it was likely
grown in a cave and that gave it a
whole different character. In Paris,
what they call les champignons de
Paris (mushrooms of Paris) were
also simple white mushrooms, but
they’re grown in these old, unused
railway tunnels beneath the city.
Of course, the conditions are
perfect for growing mushrooms,
and the flavor that came out of
this raw environment of the tunnels
was totally amazing.
That concept of how superior
ingredients can make such a
tremendous difference in the result
was a huge influence for me. It has
carried over into everything I have
done throughout my career, and it’s
what still drives me today. I’m very
picky with my ingredients, so I go
v out and select everything I get.
I personally choose everything I
cook with.
When we got to France, we
students went ou