Election Watch Party to feature special menu, drinks named after presidents who imbibed
The National Press Club's Reliable Source bar and grill will offer a special menu for its Election Watch Party starting at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 8, in the Truman Lounge.
Club members and their guests are invited to enjoy the combat on widescreen plasma TVs. There will be special food and beverage, featuring drinks named for presidents and their favorite cocktails, available.
You can make an evening of it by making a dinner reservation at the Reliable Source before the event. Call 202-662-7443 or e-mail [email protected].
ELECTION BUFFET MENU:
Hors d’oeuvres, $6/$10
South of the wall empanadas
Breaded and fried jalapenos
Beef satay
Mozzarella stix
Buffet, $20
Loser’s carved turkey: red sauce; blue sauce
Chicken saltimbocca
A fishy story: sautéed cod with lemons
Rice
Mashed potatoes
Eat your veg
Winner take all cookies
The Reliable Source Presidential Cocktail Menu
DEMOCRATS
Daiquiri (John F. Kennedy), $8
Kennedy (1961-63) sipped Daiquiris on the evening of Election Day, 1960, watching the returns and coming to learn he’d become the 35th President of the United States. Also, according to the memoir of his former intern Mimi Alford, Kennedy’s staffer David Powers plied Alford with Daiquiris so Kennedy could more easily seduce her.
Dry Gin Martini (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) $8
Roosevelt (1933-45) loved a good dry Martini, as did his chief World War II ally, Winston Churchill. Unfortunately, when FDR served one to Russian dictator Josef Stalin at the Yalta Peace Conference, Stalin claimed it was “cold on the stomach.” FDR used to work until around 7:15 p.m., then would commence cocktail hour in the “Oval Study,” as it was then known. According to his wife Eleanor, “If truth be known, Franklin used to make the most terrible Martinis. ... However, people drank them with zest because he had made them.”
Old Fashioned (Harry Truman) $8
On April 12, 1945, Truman (1945-53) was the newly-installed vice president. He was sipping bourbon in Sam Rayburn’s office when he was urgently summoned to the White House. First Lady Eleanor informed Truman that President Roosevelt had died that morning in Warm Springs, Ga., and Truman was now to become the 33d president. Flustered, Truman asked her “is there anything I can do for you?” She replied, “Is there anything we can do for you, you're the one in trouble now.” At the White House, Harry and his wife Bess loved their Old Fashioneds in the evenings, with as little sugar as possible.
REPUBLICANS
Dewars on the Rocks (James Garfield and Benjamin Harrison), $8
Garfield (1881) spent less than a year in office, but as an inauguration present, industrialist Andrew Carnegie sent a case of Dewars to the White House. Carnegie also sent the same present to Harrison (1889-93), whose thank you note to Carnegie read: “It was nice of you to think of me as to needing a ‘brace’ this winter in dealing with Congress.”
The Gin & Tonic (Dwight David Eisenhower) $8
In his role as SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force), leading the Allied armies in the June, 1944, invasion of France, Ike came to spend a lot of time with his staffer, Kay Summersby, which (according to her memoir) led to a wartime romance. One warm afternoon, she and Ike enjoyed G&Ts in an English pub. “It was a Gin and Tonic kind of day. As we set there and sipped our drinks, the late-spring afternoon slipped into evening. The nightingales were singing.”
Mai Tai (Richard Milhous Nixon) $8
Nixon (1969-74) loved Trader Vic’s, birthplace of the Mai Tai, and he would often sneak out of the White House to visit the Trader Vic’s at the corner of 16th and K Sts NW (inside the Hilton Hotel). According to Wall Street Journal columnist Eric Felten, “the Mai Tai became something of the official drink of the Nixon presidency, much to the consternation of some.”