The Inaugural Luncheon occurs after the swearing-in of the President and is organized by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Moreover, the JCCIC puts together the entire Inaugural ceremony and chose this year’s theme - “Faith in America’s Future.”
On the official Inauguration website, I ran across the 2013 menu (recipes included) this morning: http://www.inaugural.senate.gov/luncheon/menus. Feast your eyes upon this delicious looking meal:
First Course: Steamed lobster with New England clam chowder sauce, served on sauteed spinach with sweet potato hay.
Second Course: Hickory grilled bison with wild huckleberry reduction, strawberry preserve and red cabbage, red potato horseradish cake, baby golden beets and green beans and butternut squash purée.
Third Course: Hudson Valley apple pie with sour cream ice cream and maple caramel sauce. Aged cheeses and honey.
Design Cuisine, a catering company based in Arlington, planned the menu to reflect our country’s agricultural past and puts a modern twist on many foods important to early Americans, such as bison and squash. The JCCIC also chose Design Cuisine to cater Obama’s luncheon in 2009.
On the Inauguration website, you can also find menus and recipes dating all the way back to 1981, Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. In that year, the first course was something called “The California Garden.” There is no explanation as to what we might have found in this “Garden.”
To me, Reagan’s menu reflects the changing nature of menu writing since the early 1980s. In fine dining establishments, I now find dishes listed with much more detail, emphasizing quality ingredients and superior cooking techniques. Compare Obama’s menu this year with Reagan’s menu, and you’ll see what I mean. I’m not saying that one is better than the other, but the execution looks very different.
It looks like Obama is in for quite a feast!
can we get an invite???
Great article! The menu looks delicious.