Sabrina Feldman, University of California, Santa Barbara
Cite as: Feldman, Sabrina. 2025. “Cheers”. Food-Fueled, 2, e00013. https://doi.org/10.57912/28905716.
Web address: https://edspace.american.edu/foodfueled/issues/volume-2/cheers/
Please click here to download the piece as a PDF. The text is also listed below.
If our ancestors were to watch over us, then my grandmother’s Scottish ancestors would be absolutely bewildered at the sight before them. At one of their first dinners as a couple, my mother and dad introduced their respective parents to each other. An Iraqi Jew married to my British grandmother, two Mexican Jews and their Mexican Jewish son, and my mother.
If our ancestors could have died twice, they might have.
My grandmother’s British instincts guided her to lift her fork (left hand) and knife (right hand) and begin cutting the meal in front of her. The others, bemused, kept their eyes on her as they lifted their tacos with their hands and took a bite. My grandmother, unrelenting in her etiquette, continued sawing at the taco and placing it into her mouth, which was turned upwards in a polite smile.
My grandfather sat next to her, his Iraqi heritage giving him the ease to use his hands to pick up the taco and follow the same custom as the rest of the table. He bobbled a bit in his chair, attempting (but altogether unable) to contain his amused laugh as he watched his wife.
There is much debate in my family over whether my grandmother’s increasingly red face was red due to embarrassment or the salsa that my grandmother placed in the taco, but I disagree with both theories. I believe my grandmother’s face flushed with the discomfort of the heterogeneity at the table, a blend unprecedented in her family’s history. Sitting with the most unlikely of people, it was impossible to feign ease; British etiquette does not provide strict guidelines on mannerisms for sitting at a table with three Mexican Jews and an Iraqi.
Yet, this group of ragtag strangers sat together fully aware that the rest of their lives involved the people that sat across from them.
And so, it began.
An alliance with ups and downs, but where the common meeting place was the dinner table, where my grandmother grew to love tacos and my dad’s family learned to turn them more into bland quesadillas on her behalf (the salsa may have had a part to play in her flushed face). In our small family, food bridged cultures and traditions. While we never found too much commonality between post-World War II British cuisine and Mexican fare, we absolutely found it between my grandfather’s Iraqi cuisine and the Mexican dishes that graced the table in my father’s parents’ home.
It occurred to me recently that if these two completely different cultures could come together on a micro level over food, food diplomacy offers limitless untapped potential. As find our footing during the first days of the second Trump administration, the breaking of bread with other nations could be a minor but necessary first step. Far from the rhetoric of the campaign trail, the great tradition of inviting and hosting foreign dignitaries in the US often centers on the dinner that hosts them: the State Dinner.
White House state dinners have been a cause for celebration even during times of shared contention. Most of these menus are catalogued in Presidential libraries, highlighting the importance of menu selection. As mentioned in Eater DC Magazine, “each [State Dinner] menu celebrates the cultural ties with the visiting country” (Plumb 2024). When President Eisenhower hosted Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev during the height of the Cold War, the menu was a carefully selected blend of American and Russian dishes that culminated in a dessert of Baked Alaska. One might wonder how much conversation went into that selection: such a dessert was meant to honor the purchase of Alaska from the Russians, but it could easily cause a big diplomatic stir if interpreted the wrong way.
Sharing food together has often represented a time to put aside hostility and to revel in the shared moment. The State Dinner is a chance to advance the President’s agenda and policy issues and used to be a commonly used tool to do so. A quick glance shows President Ronald Regan hosting over fifty state dinners during his two terms in office. (U.S. Department of State, n.d.). Conversely, President Trump only had two dinners before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but he is lucky to have a second chance at this time-honored tradition.
We must wonder amidst the rhetoric of the new administration if it is time to sit down and share a proverbial taco dinner with some of the countries with which we will continue to share borders. Maybe it would have been wise to sit down with Mexico before renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. A U.S. president has not hosted Mexico for a State Dinner since Barack Obama in 2010, and although tacos were not served, it might be just the meeting needed to kickstart increased collaboration between our two nations.
State Dinners transcend the White House. The food on the table represents the people, inside and outside of America, who see parts of themselves getting a seat at the meal. It reflects a fading sense of humanity, as world leaders lose sight of the people whose lives are deeply affected by decisions made in that very room that they have little power to influence.
At our Shabbat dinners, we always finish the Kiddush prayer with “cheers,” but our family presents our own mix of “L’chaim,” “Salud,” and “Cheers.” In English, these words directly translate to “Life, Health, and Cheers.”
My dad, who complains that he has run out of stories to tell, will remind us that we say “cheers” because in medieval times it was customary to exchange a bit of your drink with the people at the dinner table to prove that you had not poisoned them. A sign of true trust was simply raising the glasses in recognition that there was no need to exchange drinks.
While some may dismiss the idea as naive or simple, we seem to neglect the weight that sharing a meal can hold. There are dynamics born and broken, changed and solidified, redefined and preserved, all over the setting of a glass of wine, a plate, and three utensils. Currently, when divisive politics and promises of grandeur seem to take center stage, I find it absolutely necessary for the new leaders of our country to sit down with the leaders of the states that they speak so sweepingly about.
And while doing so, remember to say, “Cheers.”
References
Plumb, Tierney. 2024. “What the Elite Will Eat at Tonight’s White House State Dinner.” Eater DC, April 10, 2024. https://dc.eater.com/2024/4/10/24124556/white-house-state-dinner-japan-us-first-lady-jill-joe-biden.
U.S. Department of State. “Dinner Is Served: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a State Dinner.” State Government Stories. Accessed March 27, 2025. https://stories.state.gov/dinner-is-served/.