Macron sleeps little, relishes fine cuisine and has a taste for the wine of the great French châteaus. In this, he differs from his immediate predecessors, who had less time for culinary diplomacy, a French tradition that has endured through monarchy, empire and five republics.
“We have institutionalised the diplomatic dinner, especially since Napoleon,” said Marion Tayart de Borms, a historian of French culinary arts. “That is why a new president always salutes his chef as one of his first gestures. Everything at the state dinner has a political and cultural sense, and must be balanced. What is at stake is not just in the plates.”
Loading
The balance at the dinner was fine-tuned. Tables had names that included Great Smoky Mountains, Cévennes, Everglades, Redwood, and La Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department of France. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal; film director Claude Lelouch (a favourite of Biden for A Man and a Woman); and a host of French senators and artists mingled with the likes of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former secretary of state John Kerry and John McEnroe, a tennis star-turned-commentator.
A military band played Amazing Grace during the main course, New York, New York just after it and My Way with the oozing Brillat-Savarin cheese. French contributions to the musical offerings included Charles Trenet’s La Mer and a George Frideric Handel sonata for cello and violin, with which the brothers, Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, serenaded Biden and the first lady to rousing applause.
When Macron opened the dinner, he assured guests that “this will be a toast, not a speech, and very short”. He largely, and a little surprisingly, kept his word. Addressing “dear Joe and dear Jill”, he spoke of the “spirit of 1776” that is always in the air when the French and Americans gather, an allusion to France’s decisive support for a nascent United States during the Revolutionary War.
American soldiers who on June 6, 1944, “gave their lives for a country they did not know”, had helped forge “an unbreakable bond”, Macron said. “Americans and French have a mutual fascination. We love the American dream. You like the French way of life. We are possessive of what distinguishes us, and we are the best of friends.”
Loading
In fact, the friendship can be prickly, and Macron, in good Gaullist tradition, is fond of saying that France will “never be the vassal of the United States”. The two countries’ policies towards Ukraine and Israel are not precisely aligned, but, as the dinner demonstrated, a large reserve of goodwill tends to smooth over differences.
Biden’s timing was good in that Macron’s predecessors have been less inclined to culinary diplomacy. “It’s 15 years since we had a president who is a gourmet, who has a deep understanding of gastronomy, of its pleasures, but also its economic importance for France,” Olivia Grégoire, the minister of tourism, said in an interview.
US President Joe Biden with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace dinner.Credit: AP
She described François Hollande, who was president from 2012 until Macron took office in 2017, as “liking good food but always watching his weight, not wanting to be fat, and so he was very strict”.
As for Nicolas Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, “he never drank wine, and lunched and dined extremely quickly”.
Éric Duquenne, who was the chef at the Elysee Palace during the Sarkozy presidency, said that one state dinner for a visiting head of state lasted all of 35 minutes. “That was the record,” he said. “Sarkozy considered the table a waste of time. All he drank was Coke Zero or cranberry juice.”
Duquenne recalled a state dinner for former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that had featured lamb cooked for seven hours to form a confit. “It was a perfect marriage of our tradition and theirs, which is what you want, because French hunters have traditionally given lamb to bakers to put in the bread oven for hours until it is unctuous and soft.”
Loading
But of late, he said, culinary tastes had grown lighter, even at the Elysee Palace. The days of hunks of lamb, beef cheeks and game at state dinners had given way to poultry and fish, he said. “You no longer need to sleep right after eating.”
A rousing rendering of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive swept away any possible drowsiness. It seemed to sum up the spirit of an evening in Paris dedicated to the idea that an old alliance is still relevant and essential to the survival of Ukrainian liberty.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.