Presidential expert writes book highlighting White House cuisine

NEW YORK – Barry H. Landau, a presidential collector and connoisseur, is the kind of guy one may not notice in the pictures with celebrities. He is 59 and has been in the company of presidents for nearly 50 years. He is tall and bearded, with a home full of history and a head crammed with names, like boxes in an overstuffed closet ready to tumble out.\nHe is at work on a trilogy of books about political pomp and protocol. The first is “The President’s Table,” a 200-plus year sampling of White House cuisine, to be followed by a history of inaugurations, then a volume on presidential style.\n“We couldn’t get it all into one book,” Landau said with \na laugh.\nEnter his midtown Manhattan high-rise and you might think the Smithsonian Institution had opened a new wing. The walls are covered with vintage black and white etchings of 19th-century inaugurations. A cabinet holds presidential mugs, plates, goblets and a skeleton key that fits right into the front door of the White House, or did during the administration of John Adams.\nFor “The President’s Table,” Landau relies upon scholarship and souvenirs. The book, which features blurbs from Kissinger, Wallace and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (given shortly before the historian’s death last winter), is a coffee table work summarizing each administration, what it served and what it ate.\nFood, like handwriting or fingerprints, is inevitably personal. George Washington’s meals were highly formal, often silent, with men only allowed at the table. Abraham Lincoln had simple tastes – a typical lunch was an apple and a glass of milk – while William Howard Taft’s were expansive, so much so that the already ample president gained 55 pounds his first year in office.\nThe illustrations include a dinner invitation from George Washington, a menu insert signed by Mark Twain at the request of President Benjamin Harrison and an invitation and reply card for Greta Garbo to a luncheon honoring Franklin Roosevelt.\nAnd each item comes with a story, such as the time Landau was looking through a bookstore’s “miscellaneous” bin and found a menu from a trip President Hoover took to Costa Rica. Most would keep on browsing, but Landau was fascinated, for history’s sake (Hoover’s trip was among the first by a president to that part of the world) and for trivia’s sake.\n“The President’s Table” will be released Tuesday.