POPS & MIMI

Saturday, February 19, 2011
Dessert For President Obama's Digital Dinner Made By 'Top Chef' Champ

San Francisco's Taste Catering created the menu for the President's top-secret confab with tech titans
None of the tech billionaires who attended President Obama's private dinner on Thursday evening Tweeted or Facebooked the closed-press event at the Woodside manse of Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr--though Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, was on the presidential guest list. And Mark Zuckerberg, the founder/CEO of Facebook, was seated beside the President during the meal.

But one of the chefs who created the meal did tweet some deets: Executive Pastry Chef Yigit Pura of San Francisco's Taste Catering & Event Planning tweeted to ObFo: "my company did the meal, my team did the desserts." He also tweeted about President Obama's affection for his Banana Cream Pie (above). President Obama is a noted pie enthusiast, as is the First Lady.

Pura, who has worked in many fine restaurants, was crowned the king of Season One of Bravo TV's sweety series, Top Chef Just Desserts. Taste Catering is led by Exec Chef Chris Borges, and does all kind of high-profile events in the Bay Area. They source their ingredients locally, organically, and sustainably, according to their website.

Only one guest dishes about dinner...
So what else was on the menu? Taste's "client"--that's dinner host Doerr-- hasn't yet ok'd the release of the full menu, according to Taste's publicist Charles Zukow. The company, in keeping with privacy policies, won't announce what was served without client permission. Perhaps America will know soon. (Above: The President and the group toast at dinner)

None of the tech titans who attended the dinner went on the record about the night either, except for long-time GOP supporter John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, who issued a terse statement:

"I was honored to be part of the discussion with President Obama and Silicon Valley business leaders," Chambers said. "Government and private industry must work hand-in-hand to spur innovation, strengthen our economy and get Americans back to work. Our ongoing dialogue with the administration gives us confidence that we can boost innovation and investment in America."

The rest of President Obama's dinner companions: Apple founder/CEO-on-leave Steve Jobs was also seated beside the President at dinner, and they were joined by Carol Bartz, Yahoo! President and CEO; Art Levinson, Genentech Chairman and former CEO; Steve Westly, Founder and Managing Partner, The Westly Group; Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman and CEO of Google; Larry Ellison, Co-Founder and CEO, Oracle; Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix; and John Hennessy, President, Stanford University.