When the Obamas moved into the White House, DC’s food scene was really beginning to boom, and the First Couple took full advantage by frequently trying out trendy new restaurants. Afterward, sales at those businesses would skyrocket—a phenomenon that became widely known as the Obama Bump. “This is the ultimate guest that a restaurateur wants in Washington, DC,” said Alan Popovsky, whose downtown eatery Lincoln saw a 30 to 40 percent increase in sales for about six weeks following the president’s 2012 visit.
But the last two presidents have had relatively boring tastes. Donald Trump only visited a single DC restaurant during his entire presidency—the steakhouse in his own hotel—and occasionally ordered chain fast food. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has mostly stuck to established “power spots” like Cafe Milano, Fiola Mare, and Le Diplomate, if he’s not grabbing an ice cream cone.
But Kamala Harris, a well-known food lover, could bring some new enthusiasm for the DC dining scene to the White House if she wins the Democratic nomination and beats Trump this fall. She may even generate a “Harris bump” for restaurants.
“The first thing I can say is, you know, she eats. This is a woman who enjoys food. I’ve seen her at the table, she’ll have a whole branzino,” says Centrolina chef Amy Brandwein, who counts Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff as regulars and has hosted fundraisers for Harris over the years. Harris tends to favor vegetables and seafood at the chic CityCenterDC Italian restaurant.
Brandwein recalls one of the first times Harris came to Centrolina as a senator, she sat at the bar. “I love senators or any members of Congress who sit at the bars. I think it’s so cool,” Brandwein says. The chef sent out an extra appetizer, and Harris got up and came over to give her a hug and congratulate her on her recent James Beard nomination. “She’s like, ‘It’s the same for us in the Senate as it is for you.’ Being a woman in a male-dominated field,” Brandwein says. “I felt very seen.”
Chef Kevin Tien of modern Vietnamese restaurant Moon Rabbit hasn’t gotten a visit from the VP, but he has cooked at her residence a couple times. “She has local produce and market greens there, and she’s really into food. From talking to her team, she’s always down there cooking with them,” he says.
Tien and chef Tim Ma (Lucky Danger, Any Day Now)—who founded Chefs Stopping AAPI Hate—prepared food for her first-ever Lunar New Year celebration last year and again for a night market event celebrating Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month this May. The event included a slew of DC’s most popular restaurants, including Tiger Fork, Purple Patch, Anju, and Thip Khao, to name a few. Tien says he made an al pastor-style taco with Vietnamese lemongrass pork sausage, and Harris greeted him as “my good friend Kevin.”
“Being South Indian, she’s no stranger to flavor,” Tien says. “She talks about the time she spent in the kitchen with her mom, and she talks about the aromatics of the spices that they use.” (You’ve surely seen the viral video of her explaining, with great passion, how to season a turkey.)
Tien isn’t sure exactly how he got on Harris’s radar, but he wasn’t surprised given her vocal support of minority-owned small businesses: “She loves mingling with the chefs… I feel like she’s very in-tune with the DC food scene.”
Several DC chefs have been sharing selfies of themselves on social media since yesterday. Brandwein remembers when Harris came into Centrolina as VP, and that the staff was so excited that they were taking photos of the food they made her. Harris then went to the kitchen to take a photo with the whole team. “With a lot of pride, they’re cooking the dishes for her—somebody that gets them,” Brandwein says.
View this post on Instagram
Harris also appears to be a oenophile (if you ignore the time she reportedly asked for a cup of ice so she could drop cubes into her white wine). As a senator from a top winemaking state, she was a member of the Congressional Wine Caucus, and she has visited Cork Wine Bar several times over the years, according to co-owner Khalid Pitts. As he told Washingtonian in 2020, Harris is very savvy about wine:
“You know if you go to a foreign country and you know like six phrases or something? She’s well beyond that,” says Pitts. “She can talk about different varietals. She can talk about differences between California oak and French oak… She knows what she likes and doesn’t like, and knows why she doesn’t like it.”
Harris’s other stops around town have included Cuban cafe Colada Shop, where she picked up empanadas and a cafe con leche, and Taqueria Habanero in Northeast DC, where she accompanied Biden for Cinco de Mayo last year.
Recently, Harris visited the Dupont Circle Farmers Market, where she was spotted scoping out a bottle of “Madam” bourbon from Republic Restoratives, which features her face on the label. Then yesterday, on the historic day that Joe Biden withdrew his nomination for president, Harris enjoyed pizza as she made calls to shore up support, according to Axios. Her go-to topping? Anchovies—a very foodie choice.
“When she’s not busy running the country, she’ll probably love to escape and eat some food,” Tien says. He’s already angling for a potential presidential visit: “Luckily, Moon Rabbit is not that far away from hopefully her new residence.”