By ANDRE BAGOO Monday, April 13 2009

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US PRESIDENT Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will on Saturday dine in fine style with 33 other leaders gathered for the Summit of the Americas at a Hyatt Regency banquet in which the menu includes local culinary delights such as plantain, cassava, corn soup and one of Obama’s favourite salad greens called Arugula.

The Hyatt’s culinary staff is hard at work preparing for this week’s summit, the centrepiece of which will see the US President and his Secretary of State attend a sit-down dinner with hemispheric leaders from 8 pm on Saturday, after a full day of plenary sessions.

Newsday has had a sneak peek at the menu for the gala dinner and can reveal that it includes variations of several savoury local dishes. Among the appetisers and main courses on the five-course menu are:

*a cassava and plantain cake;

*corn soup with dumplings;

*an eight-ounce tenderloin;

*arugula mash (potatoes infused with arugula pesto) and local tomato choka;

All items on the menu will be plated for the hemispheric leaders and their spouses. The courses will run every ten to 15 minutes under the meticulous supervision of the Hyatt’s banquet staff. And while dessert is yet to be finalised, staff said this week that whatever is served will also have a local flavour.

The banquet is to be hosted by Prime Minister Patrick Manning and his wife, Local Government Minister, Hazel Manning in honour of all the Heads of State or Heads of Delegation, their spouses and special guests who will be attending the Summit. It will come hours after a working lunch for the summit delegates on environmental sustainability and after three plenary sessions.

The five-star Hyatt Regency boasts a culinary staff of roughly 80 chefs, in addition to servers. For the summit, the hotel has taken on additional chefs, including several sous chefs from the US, Argentina and Brazil. The additional staff will arrive at the Hyatt today.

In addition to preparing for Saturday’s gala dinner, which is carded to also feature a cultural presentation, culinary staff at the plush hotel are preparing fish, chicken and beef buffet menus to run from Thursday to Sunday for the delegates expected to stay at the hotel. The hotel’s 360-seat restaurant, which sprawls from inside of the ground floor of the hotel right out unto its spectacular waterfront terrace, will also feature an a la carte menu chocked full with local and international dishes as well as specials.

Among the dishes on the menu are: a cassava oil-down with pork chops; coo-coo with roasted lamb, grilled meats, including salmon, shrimp ceviche, crab and dumplings as well as salads and soups. The prices range from as much as $110 for an appetiser and $380 for a main course.

Delegates staying in the hotel will also receive gift baskets as well as small pastry items in their rooms, local fruit and plantain chips. The Hyatt staff will also be prepared to take special dietary requests from the visiting delegates and their spouses, some of whom are carded to start arriving today.

“They will definitely be having local stuff,” one Hyatt staff member said yesterday. “From curries to our local cuisine, Chinese, Indian, regular creole...the works.”

But for many, the arugula dish on Saturday’s menu will evoke memories of the 2008 US presidential campaign which saw a small controversy emerge after Obama made reference to the variety of leafy greens, which are also called rocket.

At a forum in Adel, Iowa in July 2007, Obama noted that farmers have not seen an increase in prices for their crops, despite a rise in prices at the supermarket. “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” the then senator asked. “I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”

The comments came back to haunt Obama in August last year when Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain attacked Obama for being elitist, asking a crowd, “Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people ‘cling’ to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who’s in touch with regular Americans?” But the “arugula controversy” appears to have done minimal damage on Obama’s presidential campaign, which saw him win the American elections last November by a convincing margin.