Spare_change
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- Jun 27, 2011
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One last opportunity for the fishwife and her egocentric husband to embarrass the US.
Washington (CNN)On Monday night, Mario Batali will be sitting awake at his hotel in Washington worrying about cold pasta.
The famed Italian-American chef, tapped by the White House to craft a menu for President Barack Obama's final state dinner on Tuesday, likes his food hot. The logistics of carting at least 400 plates of sweet potato agnolotti with butter and sage from the White House kitchen to a massive tent 200 yards away is, in Batali's telling, a slight concern.
"If there's one thing that I'm not going to sleep well about tonight, it's only going to be the hot plates," Batali said in between preparation sessions at the White House Monday. "I think I'll be shaking in my orange crocs tomorrow when it's about a half-hour before service."
Longtime staffers, experts in the finely tuned dynamics of the most formal of events, have assured Batali there's little to worry about. And after eight years and 14 Obama state dinners, there's likely very little that will likely go overlooked Tuesday night when the Obamas host Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and a constellation of Italian and American boldface names on the South Lawn.
The event is a bookend to the administration's first state dinner in 2009, held in honor of India and marred by gate-crashers. Since then, the Obamas have welcomed both close allies -- Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada -- as well as countries with frostier US ties, including two state dinners in honor of China.
Washington (CNN)On Monday night, Mario Batali will be sitting awake at his hotel in Washington worrying about cold pasta.
The famed Italian-American chef, tapped by the White House to craft a menu for President Barack Obama's final state dinner on Tuesday, likes his food hot. The logistics of carting at least 400 plates of sweet potato agnolotti with butter and sage from the White House kitchen to a massive tent 200 yards away is, in Batali's telling, a slight concern.
"If there's one thing that I'm not going to sleep well about tonight, it's only going to be the hot plates," Batali said in between preparation sessions at the White House Monday. "I think I'll be shaking in my orange crocs tomorrow when it's about a half-hour before service."
Longtime staffers, experts in the finely tuned dynamics of the most formal of events, have assured Batali there's little to worry about. And after eight years and 14 Obama state dinners, there's likely very little that will likely go overlooked Tuesday night when the Obamas host Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and a constellation of Italian and American boldface names on the South Lawn.
The event is a bookend to the administration's first state dinner in 2009, held in honor of India and marred by gate-crashers. Since then, the Obamas have welcomed both close allies -- Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada -- as well as countries with frostier US ties, including two state dinners in honor of China.
