We judge presidential candidates by many strange criteria: the style and color of their clothing, their hair, their height; whether they laugh, smile or frown.
Legendary food writer MFK Fisher wrote“First we eat. Then we do everything else.” In that spirit, I believe it is our patriotic duty to add to the list how and where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump dine. It turns out not to be strange at all.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff says that when he and Vice President Harris are at their home in Brentwood, they like to go to farm storea relatively recent addition to the 76-year-old Brentwood Country Mart, whose outdoor dining area is an exercise in culinary democracy. You can sit at a wooden picnic table with a $6 cappuccino and a $5 bagel, or you can claim space for the price of $2.95. fresh water from Taquería Frida. Since 1979, Reddi-Chick has served huge barbecue chicken sandwiches and French fries to generations of teenagers. The place has history.
It's a local hangout, even if some of the locals are named Harris/Emhoff, Spielberg or Schwarzenegger, and its celebrity history stretches back to Elizabeth Taylor and beyond. You don't have to be one of them to join.
We have heard about dining room scene between members of the opposing electorate: the standing ovations when Donald Trump enters the Mar-a-Lago dining room; his very rare visits to restaurantsusually in hotels he has owned in New York and Washington, DC; his unwavering commitment to well cooked steak with ketchup. Your relationship with dining out seems to prioritize control above all else.
Lately I've started to wonder if I could actually enjoy the menu at a place I've never been to before, but that's my own past. My family owned a small restaurant supply company in Chicago, and we often ended up at a neighborhood restaurant that discounted the bill because the owners owed my father money. I learned to like many different foods, but more to the point, I learned to love the promise of culinary and conversational surprises.
For over 30 years, my destination in Los Angeles has been The ovenan Italian mini-mall whose owner, an 80-year-old Romanian immigrant, still works five nights a week; I have yet to see him sit for more than 10 minutes because there are always regulars to greet and newcomers to welcome. And as much as I like food, I like continuity: the young business partner who started as a waiter, the senior waiter I met when I was 18, the familiar faces at nearby tables.
These restaurants are a throwback to the era before social media and reality TV added a competitive edge to dining out, rarely in the spotlight, but important in a more lasting way. They are the unsung heroes of the hotel sector. They take us off the couch and into a larger community.
There's a reason campaigns include stops at places like Il Forno to take photos. Candidates try a dish they otherwise wouldn't consume, in a neighborhood they may never have visited before, amid a crowd of proud locals. It is shorthand for recognition: we break bread together; I know you exist.
In fact, you rarely see a candidate eat what they've ordered because it's hard to look presidential while chewing, but we can still feel a different level of comfort between candidates. Harris stopped the action in Savannah, Georgia, and shared her vegetable recipe with award-winning chef Mashama Bailey. Trump handed out what he called “crypto burgers” at a New York City bar two days after announcing his family's new cryptocurrency business. A personal connection on one hand, a business connection on the other.
And that, more than Trump's isolated food choices (including his second burger-centric stunt last Sunday), is the point. Dining out is never just about the food, but rather the possibility of an unexpected moment on or off the menu. Regular people can get as close to Harris and Emhoff at the Country Mart as their security detail allows. No one can approach the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago without paying club dues.
If the Democrats win the White House, the first couple will be accompanied by an even larger phalanx of Secret Service agents who will stand between them and spontaneity. But the Obamas managed to go out to dinner: Vogue magazine called the list of their office restaurants too “exhaustive” to keep track of, even if public outings required an abnormal amount of pre-planning.
Residents of Springfield, Missouri, full a Haitian restaurant last month to show support following racist rumors about immigrants eating pets; Although some people dismiss restaurants as irrelevant to the important issues of the day, I guess the news hadn't reached Springfield. Let me quote another food writer from long ago: in “The Physiology of Taste,” published in 1825, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.” In the midst of a polarized presidential race, the relevant rewrite might well be: “Tell me where “you eat,” in the wider world or sheltered from it, “and I will tell you who you are.”
And how you feel about the people you set out to represent.
Karen Stabiner is a journalist, novelist, and author of six nonfiction books.
