When food gets tricky
Theresa May was unfazed by salted entrails of sea cucumber in Japan this week but not every politician copes so well with a tucker challenge
ETIQUETTE is a Japanese obsession so Theresa May faced a diplomatic challenge this week when she was confronted with an intricate tableau of octopus, sea urchin and salted entrails of sea cucumber – a marine animal rather than a vegetable – on her first day in Japan. Despite the unfamiliarity of the ingredients, however, the Prime Minister is said to have acquitted herself with aplomb at the dinner with her Japanese counterpart.
However others have fared less well when it comes to eating in public. Here are some of the most catastrophic political food-related faux pas of recent times.
At a G8 dinner in Hokkaido, Japan, in 2008 Gordon Brown was presented with a complex looking dish with which he was unfamiliar. “What’s this?” the former prime minister asked an aide, who told him it was sushi. Scanning his plate for the safest thing to try, Brown spotted a lump of something green that he presumed was a vegetable and swallowed it whole. Unfortunately it was a lump of wasabi: a spicy Japanese plant which tastes like horseradish. The effects were predictably eye-watering.
Though he later denied it, Labour grandee Peter Mandelson once mistook a Hartlepool fish and chip shop’s mushy peas for the considerably more upmarket avocado dip guacamole.
In 2015 David Cameron caused scone wars in Devon after he suffered a cream-tea catastrophe. The former prime minister was sitting in a North Devon tea room when he was asked whether it was “jam or cream first”. He plumped for jam. It was the wrong answer. That’s the way things are done in Cornwall – Devonians insist that it is always cream followed by the jam.
“Wrong way round. I knew I’d get it wrong,” he wailed, adding controversially: “It all tastes the same, doesn’t it?” Cameron was also pilloried nationally when he was photographed eating a hot dog with a knife and fork.
The previous year Ed Miliband had demonstrated his complete inability to eat a bacon butty like a normal person. The former Labour leader struggled to cope with the sandwich and the awkward photograph that resulted was used as a source of mockery for months.
Eating under the glare of cameras is certainly fraught with difficulty, a fact to which many foreign politicians can testify. In 2015 German chancellor Angela Merkel was snapped from an unflattering angle enthusiastically eating a pickled herring after the naming ceremony of a fishing trawler.
In a bid to prove that he is just like the rest of us, Donald Trump was happy to post an image of himself tucking into a bucket of KFC. Unfortunately his aides hadn’t informed him that most people do not eat the chicken and chips combo with a knife and fork. But then this is the man who likes to eat fine aged steak with tomato ketchup. Even Trump’s predecessor isn’t beyond reproach. Barack Obama was once photographed eating ice cream from a cone with a spoon despite the fact that HOT PICK: Brown chose wasabi from the sushi selection most people would agree that the only way to eat it is to lick it until it’s finished.
US governor John Kasich’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination last year never recovered from him being filmed eating pizza with a knife and fork. Sensibly, his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton avoided the cheesecake she was offered on the campaign trail. “I learned early on not to eat in front of all of you,” she told photographers. “So, I’m sitting here just pining for a bite.” In 1972 senator George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee, committed “career suicide” with his gastronomical gaffe in New York. He asked for a glass of milk to go with his kosher hot dog – mixing meat and dairy is strictly forbidden in the kosher world.
Undoubtedly the most dramatic example of a diplomatic food mishap occurred in 1992 when President George Bush Senior was the guest of then Japanese prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa. In the middle of a 12-day trip, Bush had just been beaten at tennis by his host. As he stood in the receiving line before a state dinner he was suddenly overcome with nausea. He decided to return to his duties but after eating a course of raw salmon and caviar he fainted and vomited on Miyazawa’s trousers. A secret service agent vaulted over the table to catch him as he fell while his wife Barbara quickly held up a napkin. As his entourage lowered him to the floor, the president’s eyes fluttered open as he quipped: “Just roll me under the table until the dinner’s over.”