White House Pastry Chef Practices Sugar Diplomacy

WASHINGTON —  The tiny room is wedged between the state floor and the family quarters at the White House, reachable only by elevator and governed by one dictate: “Failure is not an option.”

This room has no policy papers, no state documents. But it does have marzipan, chocolate, whipped butter, beaten eggs and cookie dough.

Welcome to the spotless, aluminum-clad domain of White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier, a softly rounded man whose happy endings are so spectacular that diners sometimes applaud.

This day, Mesnier and his assistant of 14 years, sous chef Franette McCulloch, have completed their dessert for a state dinner at which President Clinton honored President Eduardo Frei of Chile.

And like all of their creations for state occasions, this one was special.

It was a small crate made of crafted sugar, painted with food coloring to resemble wood. The label on its side, flanked by sugary Chilean and American flags, read, ‘Produce of Chile.” And it was filled with plump spring asparagus shapes formed from antique molds and made of sherbet--lemon for white asparagus, lime for green.

Sort of a savory foreign policy dessert; free trade is a hot issue on the U.S.-Chilean agenda.

Starting with a palm tree extravaganza for the president of Egypt in the Carter administration, Mesnier’s signature desserts have included a cookie-dough castle emblazoned with a green harp for the president of Ireland and columns in white chocolate for the president of Greece.

For a French-born pastry chef, the thought of producing a dessert for French President Jacques Chirac proved daunting.

The Mesnier-McCulloch partnership produced a foot-tall pyramid with balls of apple and cherry sherbet with apple brandy sauce. Each pyramid was surrounded by white pastry swans swimming on dark raspberries.

“We try to make it as interesting as possible,” Mesnier said. “So that when it comes to the table the guests are surprised, first by the look and then by the taste.”

The White House is home to perilous situations and the pastry kitchen is no exception.

“We take a lot of risks with our desserts,” Mesnier said. “Sugar, when it is blown or pulled or spun, is very fragile, very delicate. A day like today makes me very nervous.”

The no-failure motto came about one day when Mesnier’s Gallic temper flared because a reporter asked if he ever dropped a dessert.

McCulloch intervened. “We have a sign over the door of the pastry shop that reads: ‘Failure is not an option,’ ” she said.

There is no such sign, but the attitude is there.

Both chefs are convinced that a dessert makes a difference.

“When the dessert comes in, it changes everybody’s mood,” McCulloch said. “They stop the big, serious talk and start smiling and laughing and chatting. Sometimes we hear them applaud. That’s the payoff for us.”

Mesnier was born in a small village in eastern France in July 1944, on the very day American soldiers liberated the place from the Germans.

“The bullets were flying over the house,” Mesnier said.

He left school at 14, beginning an apprenticeship at the village bakery and a global trek through restaurant and hotel kitchens in Paris, Hanover, Hamburg, London and Bermuda.

In 1976, while working at the Greenbriar resort in West Virginia, he was invited to fill out an application for the White House.

Rosalynn Carter hired him the day they met.

Mesnier remembers Mrs. Carter popping into the kitchen with a grandchild to take a plateful of cookies to her office, and Amy Carter, then about 10, deciding to be a baker herself.

“She would put her cookies in the oven and then go outside to roller-skate and somebody else would have to worry about them,” he said.

The chef prepared sample desserts for Nancy Reagan, who insisted that they be “colorful and as light as possible.”

He took a new approach in the Bush administration on the theory that repeating what one had done in the past was boring.

And he shifted gears once again with Clinton’s arrival, not only for state dinners but for family occasions as well.

For Christmas, Mesnier and McCulloch have produced gingerbread houses, fully furnished with edible chairs, tables and lamps. Using photographs, they reproduced miniatures of the president’s boyhood home in Little Rock, Ark., and the first lady’s family home in Park Ridge, Ill.

And for Chelsea Clinton’s 16th birthday a year ago, the birthday cake at Camp David featured a pink hot rod and an edible replica of her new drivers’ license, complete with a photo painted with food coloring.

With Clinton, Mesnier faces a special challenge.

“He’s on a special diet because he has allergies--no dairy products, no chocolate, no wheat.”

They always make sure there’s a dessert he can eat.

Is the president ever naughty when it comes to sweets?

McCulloch answers: “It’s been rumored. We’ve never seen it.”