Here’s what Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, more presidents liked to eat

nypost.com:

“Dinner with the President: Food, Politics and a History of Breaking Bread at the White House,” (Knopf.) “The president is both a symbol of the nation and a flesh-and-blood human being and his food choices bridge those disparate roles.”The first big White House dinner was served in 1874 when President Ulysses Grant — then the youngest commander in chief at 46 — served guest of honor King Kalakaua of Hawaii a whopping 29 courses.

The dishes included trout, squab, and beef tenderloin, along with the chef’s vegetable elixir that had no equal — “a little smoother than peacock’s brains,” but not quite equal to a dish of nightingale tongues.”A state dinner requires months of planning and is viewed as an event that can help formulate future international policies of an administration.

By featuring the native foods of visiting diplomats, the meal can foster goodwill and potentially promote the president’s political agenda, observes the author, who notes that ghastly food could totally undermine a president’s legacy.While some presidents savored tossing a big state dinner, others were overwhelmed.Former President Donald Trump, who privately favored a Big Mac meal, hosted only two state dinners during his one-term presidency.

According to the author, the business mogul believed that costs for the splashy dinners could be sliced by serving hamburgers served on a conference table rather than a kitchen staff of a hundred preparing a gastronomic feast.There’s a good food story behind virtually every president: Lincoln adored possum dip, Eisenhower was a squirrel meat man and Franklin Delano Roosevelt savored buffalo tongue as an appetizer.