In 11 years of White House service, Walter Scheib saw little of the partisanship that has divided American government. He worked for two presidents, a Democrat and a Republican, but witnessed no sea change between administrations. The two commanders in chief, as far as he saw, displayed remarkable similarity in their tastes.
“There was no red-state food and no blue-state food,” Scheib, former White House executive chef, once told an interviewer. Under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, there were favorite foods and family meals, with first ladies pushing healthy fare as their husbands indulged in onion rings and potato chips.
Mealtime is “the only time they can be just normal,” the chef once told the Roanoke Times. “They can be not the president anymore, they can be a husband, a father, a friend. So our goal was really to give them a home to come home to.”
Scheib, 61, was found dead June 21 near a hiking trail in the mountainous area of Taos, New Mexico, where he resided. He was reported missing after going hiking June 13, according to news accounts. The New Mexico State Police announced his body had been recovered, but the agency did not immediately release a cause of death.
Scheib joined the White House in 1994 after an appointment as executive chef at the Greenbrier, the exclusive resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. At the time, Hillary Clinton was in her second year as first lady and had set out to make White House cuisine more distinctly American, after generations of French culinary influence.
At his audition, Scheib presented pecan-crusted lamb, red-curried sweet potatoes and morel sauce. He apparently had the first lady at the lamb, reportedly one of her favorite dishes.
As executive chef, Scheib oversaw the installation of a vegetable garden on the White House roof and modernized the kitchen. He led a full-time staff of five and a part-time staff of 20, planning and providing meals for visiting dignitaries including President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Diana, Princess of Wales, President Jacques Chirac of France, Emperor Akihito of Japan and President Boris Yeltsin of Russia.
Roland Mesnier, who worked with Scheib during a quarter-century as White House pastry chef, said in an interview that Scheib executed the “balancing act” of presenting state dinners that were elegant as well as enjoyable for guests with varied palates, and who did not generally come to the White House for “the culinary experience.”
Outside official functions, Scheib provided daily meals for the presidential family, a task that required accommodating the tastes of each half of the first couple.
“Both first ladies always were sort of eclectic and adventurous diners and like lots of organic produce and such,” Scheib once said. “But the presidents enjoyed more great meats. So when the first ladies would go away, we typically break out these wonderful big steaks.”
President Clinton’s indulgence, according to Scheib, was a 24-ounce porterhouse with bearnaise sauce and onion rings on the side. During an interview with Scheib on ABC News, TV news journalist Chris Cuomo considered the nutritional value of such a meal and quipped to Scheib that he “might be considered a presidential assassin, the way you cooked for these guys.”
“Well, I tell you,” the chef replied, “the first ladies didn’t care for it when they heard about it.”
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush moved into the White House in 2001 and preferred a diet that was described as “flavorful, identifiable and generous.” Dining in private, President Bush enjoyed huevos rancheros for Sunday brunch and sandwiches with Lay’s potato chips for lunch.
“If you had a grilled cheese, a peanut butter and honey and a BLT,” Scheib told ABC, “pretty much you’ll cover the culinary universe as far as he was concerned.”
In 2005, Scheib left the White House, with news media reporting he had been fired. “We’ve been trying to find a way to satisfy the first lady’s stylistic requirements,” he told the New York Times, “and it has been difficult. Basically, I was not successful in my attempt.”
Scheib was succeeded by Cristeta Comerford, a veteran White House assistant chef. An anonymous East Wing source later told the Wall Street Journal that Scheib had shown a “level of arrogance” by repeatedly preparing scallops, despite the fact the president did not care for them.
“There was never any request to take scallops off the menu,” Scheib told the New York Daily News. “If there had ever been any request like that, I can assure you there never would have been a scallop in the building.”
Walter Stanley Scheib III was born in Oakland, California, on May 3, 1954. He grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, where he graduated from Walter Johnson High School in 1972.
“When other kids were playing baseball, I’d be watching ‘The Galloping Gourmet’ or Julia Child,” he once told the Chicago Sun-Times, “or I’d be in the kitchen with my mother, getting underfoot, chopping onions, doing whatever she let me until finally I got so proficient she just let me do all the cooking if I wanted to.”
Scheib graduated in 1979 from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. He later rose to executive chef at a Hilton hotel in Washington and at the Boca Raton Resort and Club in Florida.
After leaving the White House, he lectured and was a private chef through his business, the American Chef. In 2007, he released a memoir, “White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen,” written with Andrew Friedman.
Scheib was a former Great Falls, Virginia, resident. His marriages to Jean Prince and Yvonne Swartz ended in divorce. Survivors include two sons from his first marriage, Walter S. Scheib IV of Denver and James Prince of McLean, Virginia; his father, Walter S. Scheib Jr. of Oceanside, California; and a brother.
“At the White House, you have to check your politics and your ego at the door,” Scheib once told the Winston-Salem Journal. “You watch the plates carefully to see if they come back clean.”
Writer Tim Carman contributed to this report.