The American Debate Over the Role of Food in Diplomacy

As part of a meal chef Edward Lee cooked for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during a 2023 State Dinner, he showcased ingredients you can find on his sustainability-driven, Korean-style tasting menu Shia in DC’s Union Market neighborhood.

“Food has a power for dialogue,” Lee says. “Chefs spend our careers not only making good food, but trying to tell stories [and] the best chefs can connect people together,” he says. “That’s something I’m always aspiring towards.”

José Andrés hopes the State Department initiative will return

Culinary diplomacy — also referred to as “gastrodiplomacy” — can play a significant role in diplomatic relations and peace-keeping efforts, said Lauren Bernstein, who served as program director of the first Diplomatic Culinary Partnership at the State Department in 2012. “Food is such a powerful connector,” she says “and food really is that vehicle that allows people to open their minds.”

Bernstein, who now leads the Culinary Diplomacy Project, a nonprofit with a similar mission to educate people around the world through culinary exchange, believes the partnership’s mission can still be carried out by chefs committed to culinary diplomacy. She said that some of the chefs involved in the State Department program have since reached out to her in hopes of continuing their efforts.

“With any change in administration, programs just sort of die on the vine,” Bernstein says. “I wouldn’t take it as this administration is targeting culinary diplomacy. I don’t really think that it is. I think it’s just not a priority of this administration.”

Johanna Mendelson-Forman, who teaches culinary diplomacy at the American University's School of International Service, and has been researching the subject, argues that Trump may simply want to take culinary diplomacy into his own hands.

In fact, his mother’s meatloaf was on the menu at Mar-a-Lago and he takes people out to dinner all the time, Mendelson-Forman says. “He understands the power of food and uses the table to connect.”

When the partnership returned in 2023, it featured a diverse roster of chefs from around the country, including Sean Sherman, the “Sioux Chef” and owner of Owamni in Minneapolis, Tootsie Tomanetz with Snow's BBQ in Lexington, Texas and Kevin Tien, chef-owner of Moon Rabbit in Washington, DC, who co-founded Chefs Stopping AAPI Hate.

José Andrés, the chef and co-founder of World Central Kitchen, who helped lead the American Culinary Corps as a “Kitchen Cabinet member,” remains hopeful that the program will continue under Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“[He] is the child of immigrants. He understands what it’s like to share a meal with people from different cultures, and the importance of building bridges around the dinner table,” Andrés said in a statement to Bon Appétit. “If he understands the importance of food as a tool to showcase America’s values and diversity to the rest of the world, he will find ways for the State Department to keep moving culinary diplomacy forward.”

“What I think is important to realize here and for chefs everywhere, is that you don’t need an organization or a government telling you to be a ‘culinary diplomat,’ ” Andrés says. “I’m always talking about longer tables—that’s culinary diplomacy. Step up and volunteer in your community and around the world, start wherever you see a need and just jump in.”