The menu for President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s state dinner for their South Korean counterparts. It will feature Maryland crab cakes, braised beef short ribs, and banana splits for dessert.
The Bidens will host South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife, Kim Keon Hee. For a state dinner in the East Room on Wednesday night, replete with six-foot tall vases filled with exquisite cherry blossom boughs.
As an appetizer, crab cakes and a slaw of cabbage, kohlrabi, fennel, and cucumbers will be served. The first course will be a chilled yellow squash soup.
The main course consists of meat, butter bean grits, sorghum-glazed carrots, and pine nuts.
Deconstructed banana split is served with lemon bar ice cream, berries, mint ginger snap cookie crumble, and “Doenjang caramel.”
The State Dinner for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee will be placed at the White House on Wednesday evening, with First Lady Jill Biden hosting a media preview.
“Joe’s favorite will be the last,” Jill Biden quipped to the reporters, alluding to her ice cream-loving husband.
“We hope to showcase the harmony of our cultures and peoples intertwined,” she said of the lunch.
The menu was developed in partnership with the first lady. Chef Edward Lee, creator of Smoke & Pickles and Buttermilk Graffiti, and White House chefs.
“The first person I called was my mother,” Lee said, revealing that she had contacted her American-born mother first since she was the first person who sprang to mind. In his words, “To come full circle and give back and to be able to do this was… a very proud moment for me and also for my mom.”
When pressed for advice, Lee simply said, “She just said don’t mess it up.”
