Bill Yossas (3:46)
In June 2004, I got a phone call from a very good friend of mine who said to me, hey, the pastry chef at the White House just retired. Okay. And, well, don't you think you should apply for the job? No, I'm happy where I am. Well, you really should. But it went on for a little bit, and so we just said our goodbyes. And then, like, 10 minutes later, someone else calls me. The pastry chef from the White House, retired. And so I had been in the business for a while, so there's a lot of these phone calls are coming in, and so I'm sort of, sort of ticking away in my brain, and I'm saying, no, I'm fine. I'm happy. But I began to do some research on this peculiar job. And so I Google up chefs of the White House, and there's a very sort of sketchy and patchy history of people who worked there in that job, and probably the most illustrious of which was James Hemings, who was Thomas Jefferson's chef. He famously went with Jefferson to Paris and. And learned from great French chefs. He cooked at the Champs Elysees, home of Jefferson, and fed heads of state and kings. And although he was a slave in America, he could have claimed his freedom in France. He did not. He stayed with Jefferson and came back to the States. So I started to think about it, and, well, you know, maybe. So I jot off a resume and sent to my friend who's good at this type of thing, and he sends it right back. That's so amateurish, I wouldn't even send it in. So, okay. And I really try another one, and, oh, it's even worse. So this goes on for a while, and I do, like, 10 resumes. And so now I'm really, like, jazzed on this project. And finally I get one, I send it in. And so now I've read about history and I've worked on all these resumes by the Time I get to the mailbox, I am. I open that door and throw it in, and this job is mine. I wait a few weeks, the answer comes back, thank you for your interest in blah, blah, blah. And of course, as you can guess, the answer was no, it is not yours. And I go back to my life. I'm fine. Fast forward two years and same guy calls me up. The last one quit. Okay, no, I'm not going to. No, no, no. He said, well, you don't have to go through the whole thing. They loved your resume. They'll fly you down there, you'll visit the White House, you'll get a tour. Why not make a weekend of it? And I'm like, well, I could go to the White House, I suppose. So I get down there and the night before check into a hotel. And I decide to walk by the White House in summertime. And it is. I don't know if you've walked by it in the Pennsylvania Avenue side in the night. It is so beautiful. Just this gleaming jewel on the hill. Perfect Palladian lines. The architecture is awesome. Beautiful grass, as green as you can picture it. And so I'm getting really like now I'm amped going the next day. There's all kinds of security, of course. There's dogs, there's guns, there's people with earphones. There's. Takes forever to get through, but finally I get in and there is literally like five interviews before I can even bake a cookie. Finally, they show me to the kitchen. It's really tiny. Makes the New York kitchen look big. And nobody there can help me. They're not allowed to help me. It's supposed to be just what, you know, I can do. So one thing that's very interesting though, that's sort of relieves my tension is that I'm looking out this window. There's a very nice window in the end of the pastry shop, which looks down on the press pool. So you see people running back and forth when there's news happening. And it's just a very interesting view of history happening right below this window. So I get in the zone. I'm making my blueberry pavlova, lemon custard and dinosaur plum roasted, the parfait, all these great buffet items. So I'm really into it. I go and I serve the. It's a 40 person buffet. The east wing staff is coming over to taste this and they demolish it. They annihilate this food. I mean, there's nothing left. You don't have to Even wash the dishes. And it's like, I'm feeling pretty good. Then I realized it's 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon. It's like, of course they ate everything. Everyone's starving. So that night I have to do what's called a showpiece, a sugar showpiece. It's this elaborate sort of pulled sugar and blown sugar and poured sugar and marzipan and chocolate and this elaborate sculpture, which this kind of thing dates back to Karem in the early 19th century. They would do these showpieces, they called them, for Napoleon and Czar Alexander and all the great leaders. Prince George, the Regent of England. Anyway, this is this elaborate piece and it takes me all night. You do it under infrared lamps which heat up the sugar and keep it malleable. So I'm working away on it, my glasses are sliding down my nose. And finally finish it. It's a branch of a peach tree which peach flowers and marzipan leaves. And it's all ready. Next morning I go into the interview. This is the top dogs there. One is known as the Chief Usher. He is the so called because back in the day when you went up to the White House, you could knock on the door, say you wanted to see the President and you were ushered up to the second floor literally to state your piece. So this ended sometime around Abraham Lincoln, but the name stuck. So Chief Usher interviews me and what's called the Social Secretary, which is a really sort of banal name for a very important person. This person arranges all the entertainment at the White House, in conjunction with the first lady, of course. So I get in, we start the interview and both lenses of my glasses drop out like I am talking to, trying to. Well, this is what I see. Both drop onto the floor. I'm totally nearsighted, I cannot see a thing. I really have to get down on my hands and knees to get these. And I. So I'm doing the interview like this. What did you say? Finally, I just give it up and give up on seeing it all. So there's just these two blurry voices, like talking to me. And somehow, for some reason it makes me very relaxed, like, oh, well, yeah, I guess. And they start asking security questions and I feel like making things up, like, oh, well, yeah, there was, you know, I was arrested. But anyway, we get through this thing and as I'm leaving, my shoulders are like humped. I'm like, that was ridiculous. That was. So I just blew it. The next day is the really big deal. This is dinner for the President and First lady and I have to go and make a beautiful dessert and present the showpiece and petit fours and chocolates and jasmine ganache. And I make this peach frangipan cobbler in a fancy kind of style. And I go to get the peaches, and they're in the refrigerator. Damn it. They're supposed to be left out to ripen. And I'm like, so they are. But they're perfect. Somebody had taken the trouble to ripen them. And. God, perfect. I mean, the type. You bite into it, the juice is all over your shirt, and you're like, really? Like, this is. Now I'm back in the game. So I'm really like, okay, let's go with this. And I make the frangipan cobbler and serve it. It's all fine. And then comes a time to meet the President and the First Lady. So reappear. Chief Usher takes me upstairs. And you walk through not the state floor of the house, but the second floor, which is the residence, much more modern in look. And the President and First lady, you know, keep it in a modern sort of decorated fashion. Beautiful paintings on the wall, modern art. The furniture's awesome, like, all kinds of beautiful space. And I start to hear the President's voice as I come close to the dining room and getting very emotional. I'm already. I'm a history nerd, if you haven't noticed. And I was, you know, like, Lincoln has stood here. Kennedy stood here. So I get into the room, and, you know, I'm pretty wobbly. And I'm sure the people downstairs told him, like, this guy, you know, might wind up on the floor. Don't be surprised. So I come in, and I'm introduced to President George w. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush. They're sitting there with the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. So. Whoa. It's a very heavy moment, and I knew I would be nervous. So I had been practicing this line, like, oh, I know what to say. So I said it. It's an honor to be here, sir. And there's kind of silence. Like, everybody waits for the big boss to talk first. So there's silence. And then in a very genuine and quiet, almost to himself, he says, it is for me, too. And I just got goosebumps. That's when I really. It really came down how. How that house has meant so much to this country and. And how people in that house, the enormity of their task. And regardless of your politics, whatever you think about the way this president or another President does things. These people give heart and soul. They give blood. And so I was really moved. I was like, this is just an amazing moment. And I really wanted to be part of history at that point. However big a speck that peach cobbler was compared to wars and famines and all the intractable problems these guys face, I wanted it. And that is how President Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush hired this gay liberal Democrat from New York to cook for them. I think it's pretty amazing. Since that time, I've been in two administrations, eight years. I'm a very proud member of Mrs. Oliver Obama's let's Move team. She has changed the way I and many other people think about food for the better, for the healthier, for better, for our atmosphere, for our soil, for our. For everything, and especially for our kids, because we need to feed them better than we're doing. That has been an amazing journey. It is a huge adventure, and it's one that I have witnessed through that little window looking down in the press pool for eight years. And it's just been awesome. Thank you.
