Latest news with #LeePingQuan
South China Morning Post
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Chinese chefs who served US presidents, and the delicious dishes they cooked
A decade ago, while he was researching his book on African-American cooks in the White House, Adrian Miller came across an intriguing title in the University of Denver library's special-collection catalogue. The book, published in 1939, was called To a President's Taste: Being the Reminiscences and Recipes of Lee Ping Quan, Ex-President's Steward on the Presidential Yacht, USS Mayflower, as told to Jim Miller. '[When] I finally got to look at that book, I almost fell out of my chair. It's a memoir cookbook. It was the most complete telling of a chef's story that we've ever had in presidential history up to that point. The fact that it was by a person of colour, too, was also noteworthy,' Miller said recently. 'So it wasn't really germane to the book I was writing about African-American chefs, but I just made a mental note that at some point this book needs to be reintroduced to folks, because it was printed in 1939 and it just seems like it fell into obscurity.' Lee Ping-quan cooked for two US presidents: William Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Photo: White House Historical Association A hard copy of Lee's memoir cookbook, detailing his time as a chef for US presidents. When Miller, a former lawyer who worked in the White House during Bill Clinton's administration, finished writing his book, he talked to a few publishers, asking if they were interested in reprinting Lee's book, but they all declined.
Washington Post
19-05-2025
- General
- Washington Post
The Asian chefs who have fed U.S. presidents
Adrian Miller was hoping to find a long-lost treasure in the stacks at the University of Denver's library — but the one he discovered was unexpected. The self-described 'Soul Food Scholar,' whose books exploring African American food history have won two James Beard Awards, was searching through the library's Cookery and Foodways Collection of more than 11,000 volumes, many of which had originally been collected by Margaret Husted, whose husband had been the business editor of U.S. News & World Report. Among the items were community cookbooks and compilations of historical recipes, dating back centuries. In 2015, while looking for information about Black chefs who may have cooked in the White House, Miller simply typed 'presidential' into the database and was surprised by the book title — and author — that suddenly appeared: 'To a President's Taste: Being the Reminiscences and Recipes of Lee Ping Quan, Ex-President's Steward on the Presidential Yacht, U.S.S. Mayflower.'
