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White House Chef Retires after Nearly 30 Years

FILE - White House executive chef Cris Comerford, holds dishes as she speaks during a media preview for the State Dinner with President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Nov. 30, 2022. Comerford has retired after nearly three decades of making meals and cooking up state dinners for five different presidents and their families. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
FILE - White House executive chef Cris Comerford, holds dishes as she speaks during a media preview for the State Dinner with President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Nov. 30, 2022. Comerford has retired after nearly three decades of making meals and cooking up state dinners for five different presidents and their families. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
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White House Chef Retires after Nearly 30 Years

FILE - White House executive chef Cris Comerford, holds dishes as she speaks during a media preview for the State Dinner with President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Nov. 30, 2022. Comerford has retired after nearly three decades of making meals and cooking up state dinners for five different presidents and their families. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
FILE - White House executive chef Cris Comerford, holds dishes as she speaks during a media preview for the State Dinner with President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Nov. 30, 2022. Comerford has retired after nearly three decades of making meals and cooking up state dinners for five different presidents and their families. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

The White House's executive chef has retired after nearly three decades of making meals and cooking up state dinners for five different presidents and their families.

Cris Comerford is the first woman to hold the job, and is also the first person of color to be executive chef. Her last day was Friday. First lady Jill Biden thanked her for her service in a statement on Tuesday.

“I always say, food is love. Through her barrier-breaking career, Chef Cris has led her team with warmth and creativity, and nourished our souls along the way," Jill Biden said in a statement. "With all our hearts, Joe and I are filled with gratitude for her dedication and years of service.”

Comerford, 61, sharpened her culinary skills while working at hotels in Chicago and restaurants in Washington before the White House brought her on in 1995 as an assistant chef, The AP reported.

A naturalized US citizen and a native of the Philippines, she was named executive chef in 2005. Her responsibilities as executive chef included designing and executing menus for state dinners, social events, holiday functions, receptions and official luncheons.

She and pastry chef Susie Morrison — also the first woman in that job — formed a duo that has tantalized the taste buds of guests at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their culinary creations for nearly a decade.

A lavish state dinner is a tool of US diplomacy, a high honor reserved for America’s longstanding and closest allies and the food is the signature event. Comerford's last state dinner was for Kenyan President William Ruto and his wife, Rachel, in May.

The team served a three-course meal of chilled heirloom tomato soup and a “best of both worlds” main course of smoked beef short ribs and butter-poached lobster. Dessert was a homemade white chocolate basket of raspberries, peaches and other fruit.

Chef and humanitarian José Andrés seemed to break the news Monday evening with a post congratulating her. “You are a national treasure, a culinary diplomat who has shown the world how an immigrant can celebrate American food & share it with the world’s leaders,” he posted. “Congrats on retiring, we love you Cris.”

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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH

In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers Wednesday for US and Japanese companies looking to jumpstart business on Earth’s dusty sidekick.
The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for the moon, The Associated Press reported. They shared the ride to save money but parted company an hour into the flight exactly as planned, taking separate roundabout routes for the monthslong journey.
It’s take 2 for the Tokyo-based ispace, whose first lander crashed into the moon two years ago. This time, it has a rover on board with a scoop to gather up lunar dirt for study and plans to test potential food and water sources for future explorers.
Lunar newcomer Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is flying 10 experiments for NASA, including a vacuum to gather dirt, a drill to measure the temperature below the surface and a device that could be used by future moonwalkers to keep the sharp, abrasive particles off their spacesuits and equipment.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost — named after a species of US Southeastern fireflies — should reach the moon first. The 6-foot-6-inches-tall (2-meter-tall) lander will attempt a touchdown in early March at Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain in the northern latitudes.
The slightly bigger ispace lander named Resilience will take four to five months to get there, targeting a touchdown in late May or early June at Mare Frigoris, even farther north on the moon’s near side.
“We don’t think this is a race. Some people say ‘race to the moon,’ but it’s not about the speed,” ispace’s founder CEO Takeshi Hakamada said this week from Cape Canaveral.
Both Hakamada and Firefly CEO Jason Kim acknowledge the challenges still ahead, given the wreckage littering the lunar landscape. Only five countries have successfully placed spacecraft on the moon since the 1960s: the former Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan.
“We’ve done everything we can on the design and the engineering,” Kim said. Even so, he pinned an Irish shamrock to his jacket lapel Tuesday night for good luck.
The US remains the only one to have landed astronauts. NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, aims to get astronauts back on the moon by the end of the decade.
Before that can happen, “we’re sending a lot of science and a lot of technology ahead of time to prepare for that,” NASA's science mission chief Nicky Fox said on the eve of launch.
If acing their respective touchdowns, both spacecraft will spend two weeks operating in constant daylight, shutting down once darkness hits.
Once lowered onto the lunar surface, ispace’s 11-pound (5-kilogram) rover will stay near the lander, traveling up to hundreds of yards (meters) in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. The rover has its own special delivery to drop off on the lunar dust: a toy-size red house designed by a Swedish artist.
NASA is paying $101 million to Firefly for the mission and another $44 million for the experiments. Hakamada declined to divulge the cost of ispace’s rebooted mission with six experiments, saying it's less than the first mission that topped $100 million.
Coming up by the end of February is the second moonshot for NASA by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. Last year, the company achieved the first US lunar touchdown in more than a half-century, landing sideways near the south pole but still managing to operate.