What the Elite Will Eat at Tonight’s White House State Dinner

The President and First Lady are eating well this week. Tonight’s state dinner to honor Japan’s visiting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his wife will feature house-cured salmon, dry-aged Maryland beef, and a salted-caramel pistachio cake prepared by the White House’s chefs. After the lavish three-course meal, plated on George W. Bush and Lyndon B. Johnson china, 230 well-dressed guests at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can stick around for an intimate concert from famed American singer-songwriter Paul Simon.

On the eve of his high-profile house party, President Joe Biden let another D.C. restaurant do the work. He headed up to the Palisades to dine with the Japanese PM at Blacksalt, where he reportedly enjoyed crab cakes at the 20-year-old seafood house.

Tonight marks the fifth state dinner under the current Biden administration, having previously welcomed dignitaries from India, Australia, South Korea, and France. Each menu celebrates cultural ties with the visiting country. The seafood starter, served with watermelon radish, grapefruit, avocado, cucumber, and tempura-fried shiso leaf, resembles a deconstructed California roll by design: The popular stateside sushi order is said to be invented by Japanese chefs in California, noted White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford during a press preview of the dinner last night.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Cherry blossoms — a century-old gift from Japan that make the Tidal Basin pop in pink every spring — naturally play a prevalent part in tonight’s theme.

Even though state dinners are a well-oiled machine at this point, prep work for one evening that wraps up by 10:15 p.m. takes months. The state floor is currently transformed into a “vibrant spring garden — a place of joy, renewal, hope, and growth,” noted First Lady Jill Biden at the media preview.

Dazzling design details include oversized fans and images of koi fish swimming under attendees’ stilettos and loafers. There’s a walkway surrounded in six-foot-tall purple, pink, and blue hydrangeas — a flowering plant that grows in the U.S. and Japan — and both nations also contributed glass and silk butterflies that flutter over table settings.

Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

There’s no sake served, but all three wines (a Chardonnay, Pirouette red, and rosé) hail from the Pacific Northwest — an area home to a sizable Japanese American population.

Courses showcase ingredients from coast to coast, including morel mushrooms of Oregon, beef from a Maryland farm, ruby red grapefruit and pistachios shipped from California, and greens just growing in Ohio. Spring produce planted in the White House garden isn’t quite ready to pluck, noted Comerford.

White House executive pastry chef Susan Morrison made sure the President gets his ice cream fix tonight with a Bing cherry dollop for dessert.

Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images