March 8, 2015

Finest Hour 158, Spring 2013

Page 41

Cita Stelzer on WSC and Franklin Roosevelt’s Food and Drink

In an amusing talk about her book, Dinner with Churchill (video at http://cs.pn/ZnbXhJ) Cita Stelzer explains how Churchill used his wit and wisdom to deal with President Roosevelt’s cuisine and drinks without appearing to disapprove.

Churchill, she says, liked “simple food exquisitely prepared,” most of it by his famous cook, Georgina Landemare; while Roosevelt constantly lambasted the quality of White House food, prepared by his chef Mrs. Nesbitt, himself adding to the ordeal with his own weird tastes— and by preparing simply the worst martinis in the world. From Mrs. Stelzer’s book (reviewed FH 153: 46):

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“The first White House dinner at which Churchill had an opportunity to deploy his combination of charm and the careful planning he had done during his transatlantic voyages was at a ‘semiformal’ dinner on the day he arrived, 22 December 1941….” Mrs. Nesbitt did not cater to English tastes, and particularly those of WSC, “serving a cream soup, much disliked by Churchill, followed by kedgeree and grilled tomatoes and raspberry Mary Anne [which] may have made Churchill long for some home cooking.”

The book quotes an observer at one dinner: “The President loved sauerkraut and pigs’ knuckles and had that dish served to Churchill, who politely asked what they were. When told, Churchill, on his best behavior, only responded, according to [White House butler] Alonzo Fields, that they were ‘very good, but sort of slimy.’

“Roosevelt was known for his robust and unusual cocktails—the proportions of his martinis were said to be ‘unfortunate.’ Charles ‘Chip’ Bohlen, one of Roosevelt’s diplomats and his interpreter at Teheran, says the martinis were made with a ‘large quantity of vermouth, both sweet and dry, with a small amount of gin.’ No mention of the infamous Argentine vermouth to which he had introduced his British guest at Placentia Bay” during the Atlantic Conference of August 1941.

Churchill, Cita Stelzer added, was not a cocktail drinker, let alone martinis, let alone martinis that were half vermouth. So the Prime Minister surreptitiously avoided the diplomatic necessity of drinking them by depositing the contents of his glass in a nearby flowerpot.

If the plant died, we should not be surprised.