Bill Clinton's gastronomic imprint around the world

Bill Clinton has dined at Bukhara, an upscale restaurant in New Delhi, on just two occasions, but the afterglow of those visits has never worn off. The clientele, it seems, won’t let it.

Since that first meal, in 2000, so many customers have uttered some variation of “Give us what the president had,” that the restaurant has started serving a mixed-meat sampler — a one-off prepared for Clinton and his guests — as a nightly special. The Bill Clinton platter, as it is known, is an aromatic spread of mixed meats, lentils and oven-baked bread.

Price: Rs 5,000 or about $110.

For those who can’t handle that much minced lamb and chicken tandoori, a night at Bukhara can still have a Clintonian cast. Just ask for “the Clinton table,” the six-seater said to be Clinton’s perch of choice in the middle of the restaurant, with an unhindered view of the open-air kitchen.

Be sure to call ahead, though.

“People come in all the time and ask for that table,” says Avinash Deshmukh, a manager at the ITC Maurya Hotel, where Bukhara is located. “The strange thing is we’ve never advertised the fact that Clinton has eaten here. Everybody just seems to know that when they walk in the door.”

It may sound improbable, given the junk-food associations once attached to the man’s name, but few phrases are more bankable to restaurants around the world than “Bill Clinton ate here.”

Somehow, the 42nd president has become an arbiter of international fine dining, conferring a sort of informal Michelin star just by showing up. He is doing for restaurants around the world what George Washington once did in America for places to sleep.

Clinton routinely pops up in guidebooks and newspaper articles about restaurants, invariably with the implication that a beloved gourmand has attached his seal of approval. If you travel enough, you will eventually hear a tip that goes something like: “When you’re in Madrid, try Casa Lucio. Bill Clinton ate there with the King of Spain.” Or “Check out Le Pont de la Tour in London. Bill Clinton loves it.”

How exactly did Clinton become the No. 1 restaurant maven in the non-United States category?

It’s widely (and correctly) assumed that he has good connections everywhere he visits, so he’s unlikely to wind up at a dud. More than most celebrities, he seems like a person who appreciates good food, and before he had heart surgery, he was known for his wide-ranging appetite.

When Clinton visits a restaurant, everybody in the room knows of it. Douglas Band, an aide who frequently travels with Clinton, and who fielded questions for this article on his behalf, says his boss introduces himself to every diner, as well as every waiter and every kitchen staff member. He will always pose for photographs and sign guest books. Someone from his staff will send a thank-you note a few days later.

Anyone who trails in Clinton’s dining path will eat well, but should know that his taste in restaurants, when he actually selects them, runs to the bright, lively and unfussy. The white table cloth, 10-course prix fixe experience is not his style.
For health reasons, he is a vegan these days, and during recent travels his diet has included miso barley soup, black bean burritos and cauliflower and potato curry, typically prepared by a member of his entourage. Overseas, however, he’s been known to stray.

“He had the filet mignon last time he was here, four months ago,” says Javier Blazquez, the son of the owner of Casa Lucio. “The doctors tell him not to eat it, but he does anyway.”

Even in the US

Celebrity endorsements of every variety — movie stars, famous athletes and anyone else with a high Q rating — provide bragging rights for all kinds of restaurants. It’s also true that Clinton’s patronage in the United States has provided public relations boosts for places like Il Mulino in Manhattan and Georgia Brown’s in Washington.
Though when it comes to Bill Clinton and overseas restaurants, the upside is on a far greater scale. Managers and owners from Beijing to Iceland and points between say an appearance by Clinton can be transformational, launching an obscure restaurant to fame and cementing the reputation of well-known favourites. Best of all, the imprimatur seems to last for years.

“We had 25 people from Sweden in here last night,” says Detlef Obermuller, owner of Gugelhof, a Berlin restaurant that was host to Clinton and Chancellor Gerhard Schroder in 2000.

“I asked one of them, ‘How do you know about this place?”’ Obermuller said. “And she took out a newspaper clipping out of her pocket. I can’t read Swedish, but she told me it was all about Bill Clinton eating here. And that meal was a decade ago.”
Not that Obermuller has forgotten any of the details. He and his staff were given a mere 20-minute heads-up by German security before Clinton & Co arrived. News of the dinner then spread quickly on radio and television, and by the time dessert was served, a crowd of 2,000 had gathered outside to greet the man who had declared “Berlin is free!” in a 1994 speech before the Brandenburg Gate.

Typically, Band, a Clinton aide said, restaurant ideas come from a member of Clinton’s advance team, who consults a concierge. Convenience often weighs as heavily as flavour. One of the reasons that Clinton likes Bukhara, Band said, is that it’s on the ground floor of a hotel where Clinton often stays, which means he and his security entourage can eat there without snarling New Delhi traffic.

Other times, the restaurant choice is left to local dignitaries. Even in those instances, the decisions can be a little mysterious.

Good fortune, it seems, plays a surprisingly large role in the Bill Clinton international restaurant sweepstakes. Clinton helped a hot dog stand in Reykjavik called Baejarins Beztu Pylsur achieve worldwide acclaim after he stopped there during a visit to Iceland in 2004. But the former president nearly walked right by.

“I have this nice older woman who has been working for me for 30 years, and she saw Clinton, and she just shouted at him to stop and try one of our hot dogs,” said Gudrun Kristmundottir, the stand’s owner. “And he did.”

The next day, TV reporters and newspapers from all over the world were calling. And in 2006, Baejarins Beztu Pylsur (‘city’s best hot dogs’ in Icelandic) turned up on a list of the five best European food stalls in ‘The Guardian’ in England. Inevitably, Clinton’s stop was noted.

“It was just unbelievable, the amount of attention,” Kristmundottir said. “I never understood all the fuss over a single hot dog.”

The fuss invariably translates into more customers and more money, but it can have downsides. Obermuller said that for months after Clinton’s visit, busloads of tourists would regularly stop by Gugelhof — not to eat, but to walk in and gawk.

“It was bad for a while,” he said. “A lot of people who live around here were really mad at us. They said we’d ruined the neighbourhood.”