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Indian leaders taste fine food on US visits
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-25 10:59
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WASHINGTON: In the history of US-India relations, there has been plenty of broken bread and fancy menus.
American presidents have entertained India's leaders over fine wine and even finer food for the past 60 years -- at grand White House dinners with hundreds of guests in black-tie, at an intimate Sunday lunch and away from Washington's prying eyes near a storied Civil War battlefield an hour's drive north of the capital.
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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is coming for a state visit and all that it entails -- a pomp-filled welcome ceremony that was brought inside the White House because of rainy weather, private time with Obama, a joint news conference and, in the evening, the state dinner, to be held outside for 320 people.
First lady Michelle Obama gave an afternoon preview of what's sure to be Washington's hottest social event since the inauguration. Even the smallest details were fraught with symbolism. For her preview appearance, for example, the first lady wore a skirt by Rachel Roy, who is Indian.
Guests were to dine at tables for 10 in a huge tent on the South Lawn, its walls decorated with magnolia branches, which are native both to India and the United States.
The deep purple flower arrangements were designed to pay homage to the state bird of India, the peacock.
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 US President Barack Obama speaks to India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before a state dinner at the White House November 24, 2009. [Agencies] |
The service plates used for the dinner were purchased in the tenure of Dwight Eisenhower, the first president to visit India after its independence.
The entertainment lineup was topped by Oscar-winners Jennifer Hudson and A.R. Rahman, two of the top performers from contemporary American and Indian music. Hudson won an Academy Award for her role in "Dreamgirls"; Rahman won two for the music in "Slumdog Millionaire."
The first lady brought in award-winning chef Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit, a Scandinavian restaurant in New York City, to help the White House kitchen staff prepare the largely vegetarian meal. The culinary lineup included potato and egg plant salad, red lentil soup, and roasted potato dumplings or green curry prawns.
The basic White House dinner has been tweaked over the years to suit guests, invited and uninvited. A driving rain drove President John F. Kennedy's guests to the East Room, scuttling months of planning for Mozart on the South Lawn for Indian President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
With nearly 700 guests in a tent on the lawn, the India state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was one of the largest such events of Bill Clinton's presidency. George W. Bush's dinner for Singh in 2005 was notable because he held so few overall.
