U.S. Senate Restaurant

Can't wait till Intermission!

I found this menu from the U.S. Senate Dining Room in our attic this summer while going through my and my sisters'  boxes.  Lots of treasures there, and here in this very menu, as I discovered today.

I was immediately impressed by this menu's reverence for itself.  First, it has a fine red thread tassel decorating the binding.  Second, it has a Soup Story, and I am very fond of menu tales.  This is followed by a recipe, which charges that one must either recreate the soup in the restaurant itself (unlikely) or remove the menu from the restaurant (I like!), garnering it automatic souvenir status.  Further, the menu is signed, and I will take note of this, and try to use menus as autograph books more often.  I did see the Gyllenhaals in Peels the other month...

Finally, the menu is so freakin' simple that it must be from the 80's.  In fact, it is a relic from 1988, when my grandparents took my sister to Washington, D.C.- a trip they planned for each of us when we turned 8.  We'd see all the monuments, maybe take a tour of the White House, and One of Us got a special trip to the U.S. Senate Dining Room...

Legend has it, Senators of yore passed more than just bills.

 

To Senator Hecht: The pleasure was mine.

 

The autograph on the front cover, I discovered, is from Chic Hecht, the appropriately bespectacled Republican Senator from Nevada.  Hecht's profile matches someone my conservative grandfather would have taken my 8 year old sister to meet, but as it turns out, there's a great story behind this guy and this menu.  

According to Wikipedia, in 1988- the very same year he signed this menu- Hecht choked on an apple slice in that very same dining room while lunching on the Fresh Seasonal Fruit with Cottage Cheese item under "Cold Plates and Salads".  Leaving the dining room, he ran into a young John Kerry, who performed the Heimlich, saving Hecht's life.  They had a quiet, bipartisan friendship forever after.

Hecht: Same glasses as Grampy, loves Nevada too... mysterious.

 




 Perhaps a nice sit-down in the U.S. Senate Dining room is what we need to get these guys to reach across the aisle, maybe pass some bills.  Maybe just share some bean soup.

I'll take 2 Weekly Fitness Features, please, and a Chocolate Ganache Pumpkin Pie to go.