Meet the Dames Monday! SUSAN DELBERT

Come meet our spotlighted Dame for this week! 

Dame Susan M. Delbert joined the National Press Club as Executive Chef in 2009 after working in Washington DC restaurants: The Old Ebbitt Grill, Oval Room, BeDuCi and Gerard’s Place. She trained at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, NY. 

We sat down with her to find a little bit more about this very accomplished chef and found out that a smile goes a very long way.......

My first job was and the greatest lesson I learned from it was: First job is tough to nail down, as I am a tax attorney by training and long experience, but I was also a cook, navigator, salesperson and owner of a one year old Golden Retriever. Sometimes I'm not sure where jobs, vocations and past-times begin and end. But a lesson I have taken from most employment is that a smile helps most situations, keeping calm goes a long way in diffusing volatility and doing one's homework also helps when tackling a new challenge

If I were a kitchen tool, I'd be a:   Calling oneself a tool is somewhat funny, given the slang use of the word. The indispensable, of course, the sharpest chef knife in the block....

The most pressing food issue facing the world today is: (1) clean water and adequate protein for exploding populations; (2) the effect of climate change on vegetation mutation and animal extinction; and (3) the inability to eat anything one wants, as often as one wants and still fit into last year's suit (joke).

My favorite DC restaurant is: The Press Club has a restaurant open to the public, The Fourth Estate. Only a select 1% of Washington seems to know it is open to all. We serve seasonal, flavorful classic American cuisine. It's the restaurant in which I get to present my food, and my ideas of seasonality. How could this not be my favorite?

The funniest/most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me on the job was: I'm much too clumsy to ever have just one embarrassment. My life is about comic relief.....

The legacy I wish to leave is: This is tough: Good food, good friends, sharing time? Love lasts forever? Living well is the Best Revenge? A good friend is a friend indeed?