Ex-White House chef Rene Verdon dies at 86

Rene Verdon, a French-born chef who brought an air of continental sophistication to the White House under the Kennedys, and then left his post after a clash with the Johnson administration over frozen vegetables and garbanzo beans, died Wednesday at his home in San Francisco of undisclosed causes. He was 86.

Verdon, who later ran an acclaimed San Francisco restaurant and won admirers including Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, was perhaps most renowned for his five-year tenure at the White House.

When he arrived at the executive mansion in spring 1961, he took over a kitchen that had long been run by caterers and Navy stewards and not known for producing fine food.

That changed under Verdon - a "culinary genius," The Washington Post said, with refined tastes admired by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

A veteran of some of Paris' best restaurants, Verdon championed seasonal, local food long before it became fashionable. He grew vegetables on the White House roof and herbs in the East Garden.

"I cooked everything fresh," he told The New York Times in 2009. "If the ingredients are superb, then the cooking can be, and must be, simple." In April 1961, his White House debut - a luncheon for British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan - made the front page of The New York Times.

Verdon served trout cooked in Chablis, roast fillet of beef au jus and artichoke bottoms Beaucaire. Dessert was a vacherin, or meringue shell, filled with raspberries and chocolate ice cream.

Media coverage of Verdon's menus helped burnish the Kennedys' reputation as tastemakers and spurred home cooks across the United States to begin investigating French cuisine.

Verdon continued working at the White House for more than two years after Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but tastes were decidedly different under Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson - "more South," Verdon once said.

In 1965, the Johnsons hired a Texan "food coordinator" to cut costs. Her bargain-hunting brought frozen and canned vegetables to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., a change Verdon couldn't stomach.

"I don't think you can economize on food in the White House," he said. Plus, "I don't want to lose my reputation." He resigned at the end of the year after he was asked to prepare a cold puree of garbanzo beans - a dish he described as "already bad hot."

Verdon was born in the village of Pouzauges on France's west coast, where his parents owned a bakery and pastry shop.

He was working as an assistant chef at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, where the Kennedys had a penthouse, when Kennedy was elected president.