What does a busy president want to eat? This White House chef has the answer

You know that old line, "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are"? If that's true, then Cristeta Comerford knows the last five presidents of the United States better than almost anyone.

Comerford just retired after nearly 30 years as White House chef. She cooked for presidents from Clinton to Biden, making everything from family snacks to state dinners.

Just days before she left D.C. and moved to Florida, she came to the NPR studios to look back on her career, and said she didn't think about the barriers that she broke when she became the first woman and the first person of color to hold the top job in the White House kitchen.

“I didn't even realize that, because I was just doing what I wanted to do. I love to cook. It just so happens that I'm a minority woman,” she said. “But when I broke the glass ceiling, I didn't realize that it was, like, news all over!”

That was in 2005 during the George W. Bush administration that she took the executive chef position.

Comerford sat down with All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro to talk about how she prepares to cook for the most powerful person in the world, how the food she sometimes chose connects to her youth, and what President Obama once said about her hamburgers.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Ari Shapiro: You were born in the Philippines. You grew up one of 11 children in Manilla and you came to the U.S. at the age of 23. Did any of the presidents you worked for ask you to cook the food of your childhood, the food you grew up with?

Cristeta Comerford: President Obama, he lived in Hawaii for a while, so there's a lot of Filipino communities there, so he's very familiar with the Filipino food. So every now and