The Jockey Club Makes a Comeback

Both Barack and Michelle are hip, urban dwellers who enjoy good food and good wine. In fact Barack proposed to Michelle over dinner in a fancy Chicago restaurant. She had been pressing for marriage and when they came to dessert, on the plate was a box. In the box was an engagement ring. Michelle could not recall what the dessert was.

And unlike the Bushes, who basically enjoyed Tex-Mex and went to bed early, the Obamas are adventurous eaters and will undoubtedly explore many of the new spots thriving around town. The president-elect is already familiar with Zola (a sleek modern American restaurant), Zatiniya (which features Greek and Mediterranean style fare), and Wolfgang Puck’s two story Asian fusion restaurant, The Source. (Obama is known to be especially fond of Roy’s Hawaiian fusion back home in Oahu.)

In an effort to generate buzz about the Jockey Club’s reopening, Republican hostess Buffy Cafritz and super Clintonistas Ann and Vernon Jordan gave a dinner for seventy the week before Thanksgiving. The event was so successful that the three have rejoined forces to throw a much larger, fancier, bi-partisan soiree the night of Obama’s inauguration. This will certainly attract a bunch of newcomers, stir up pangs of nostalgia and help to put the Jockey Club back on the map.

One major dilemma for general manager Klaus Peters is that so many Clintonites are now part of the Obama administration (some consider it Clinton re-dux). They really eschewed the Jockey Club, preferring to hang out at Café Milano. It may be a problem persuading them to come for dinner.

So in a city now crammed with a plethora of big name chefs is a sentimental journey enough to entice the movers and shakers? Will the incoming Obama crowd truly embrace the world of Camelot?“When we restored this grande dame we made a decision to prepare for the future by bringing back the past,” Peters says. Will we be successful? We’re gonna to find out.”

Sandra McElwaine is a Washington based journalist, who specializes in profiles and contemporary culture. She has been a reporter for The Washington Star, The Baltimore Sun, a correspondent for CNN and People and Washington editor of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Currently she writes for The Washington Post, Time and Forbes.

Note: This article has been corrected to note that Bogey passed away in 1957, four years before The Jockey Club opened in 1961.