Fox News' Shep Smith gave an unforgettably epic breakdown on his Tuesday show of the food the White House served him at a journalists' luncheon.
Smith was at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for the lunch that the president traditionally has with news anchors on the day of the State of the Union. (Just some of his companions: Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer, Scott Pelley and Wolf Blitzer.) Since the lunch is off the record, Smith could only tell viewers what he'd had to eat -- and he more than obliged, bringing up the menu about seven or eight times during the course of the hour, unfolding every detail of the food just after every commercial break. (He does this every year.)
"I have all the details," he promised.
Topics covered included: the starting course, a fresh market vegetable "lasagna" in a plum vinaigrette. Smith was so perturbed by the fact that he was served a lasagna-shaped vegetable meal and not actual lasagna that he shared the dictionary definition of the dish with his viewers at least twice. He assured them, though, that the "lasagna" was "delicious and memorable."
Then, there was the main course. Smith started by informing everyone that he'd had a thyme-roasted sea bass, though he teased that "what was underneath it was even better." Viewers had to wait through another round of commercials before he told them that it was a three bean succotash, containing "real al dente" green beans -- or, actually, they were "probably crispier, maybe, than al dente," plus butter beans and, he thought, some kind of peas. Combine that with a "nice healthy piece of fish"
and the result was perfection.
Smith saved his highest praise for the chardonnay, which, if we heard him correctly, was a 2008 "Clos du Soleil." He allowed that, normally, he would have avoided chardonnay. And oh, the dessert! It was "warm lemon pudding...this cakey thing [that] had that sort of creamy, sweet, almost like condensed milk at the bottom, but better, of course."
Smith used the lunch to push a bipartisan message of food love.
"If you're a Republican and you hate this White House, fine. You're a Democrat and you hated the last White House? Fine. But the food there? You better stop it."