WASHINGTON >> Growing up in the Philippines, Cristeta Comerford helped her mother, a seamstress, cook for a household of more than a dozen. They were simple meals: rice, a vegetable and fish or chicken, sometimes with extra potatoes to stretch the meal.

She never considered that nourishing people, and doing a lot with a little, could be a job. But her father did.

“He was like, ‘Cris! You should go to Cordon Bleu and be a chef,” Comerford, who goes by Cris or “Cheffie,” said in an interview Thursday. She never did go to culinary school, but she became the first woman and person of color to serve as White House executive chef.

Comerford, 61, retired July 26, having cooked for five presidents and their families, charted out more than 50 state dinners, and overseen a renovation of the White House kitchen that was built more than a century ago. But she has not forgotten what first stirred her about cooking.

“You see the public life, but at the end of the day the people that we serve are just people like us who want nourishment and good food,” Comerford said.

Jill Biden, the first lady, praised the chef’s commitment to the first family in a statement announcing her retirement.

“I always say, food is love,” Biden wrote. “Through her barrier-breaking career, Chef Cris has led her team with warmth and creativity, and nourished our souls along the way. With all our hearts, Joe and I are filled with gratitude for her dedication and years of service.”

After Comerford waved off her father’s suggestion of a career as a chef, she studied food science at the University of the Philippines. But she never finished her degree, leaving to immigrate to the United States with her family. They settled in Chicago, where she encountered her first chef at a job interview.

“Back then, they wore the white scarf, the white jacket, the white aprons, the white pants and the white gloves,” Comerford recalled. “When I saw him, for some reason, I was automatically attracted to that world.”

She began a career cooking in hotel kitchens, where she met her husband, John. But when it came time to move to Washington for his job, she hesitated.

“Coming from a Filipino family from Chicago, we’re very close-knit,” Comerford said. “I was kicking and screaming, ‘No! I don’t want to move to D.C.!’ I never realized it would have been the most miraculous move of my life.”

Comerford first stepped into the White House for a part-time job during the Clinton administration. It became a full-time sous chef position in 1995, and in 2005 came the ultimate promotion. At the time, she didn’t see it as groundbreaking.

“A chef is a chef,” Comerford said. “But I guess, during that time, it was not easy for a woman chef or a woman of color to have such a high, elevated position in the culinary world.”

The role came with unique challenges in the White House. Walter Scheib, Comerford’s predecessor, was dismissed by the Bush family, which was not fond of his light menus.

“If it wasn’t baked or fried, he wasn’t interested,” Scheib later said of former President George W. Bush’s tastes.

“I stayed through so many administrations,” Comerford said. “But looking back, it’s just because you just want to listen to what people would want to eat. You have to be very sensitive to everything.”

She demurred when asked about the tastes of presidents over the years. President Joe Biden loves his pasta, she said, but eats a healthy diet, as the chef’s team prioritizes good food and sustenance.

Comerford flitted between the role of personal chef to the first family and the conductor of huge state dinners, requiring her to draft symbolic menus and procure just the right cut of steak or fresh vegetables from across the country.

“We are really, basically bonded by what we eat together,” Comerford said. “Culinary diplomacy is everything.”

She was also tasked with stewardship of a vast collection of historic china and flatware. And then there were the long days that could stretch from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. It was “physically taxing,” Comerford said, and it was her husband who would take their daughter to gymnastics and put dinner on the table at home.

Michelle Obama, in a 2009 statement announcing that the chef would stay in her job, praised her and Comerford’s “shared perspectives” as mothers to young daughters. Danielle, Comerford’s daughter, was 4 years old when her mother got the executive chef job, and would wear her own embroidered chef’s coat when she came in on Take Your Child to Work Day.

“I really think this is the most demanding job,” Comerford said. “But I loved every minute of it.”

She brought her own style to the White House’s 900-square-foot kitchen and encouraged the same in others. At heritage events and even state dinners, she asked around for family recipes instead of offering her own interpretation of traditional foods like lumpia, Indian chana puri or Greek dolmas.

“We really tried to do it” the way “somebody’s mom or grandma would do it,” Comerford said. But those occasions were few.

With her long days at the White House, her husband, who is not Filipino, kept up traditions. “I learned how to cook Filipino food,” John Comerford said. “I would cook fresh lumpia, adobo, sinigang.”

The first lady toasted Cristeta Comerford at the chef’s last dinner, a social evening for NATO heads of state and their spouses last month. Her successor is yet to be announced, but Comerford hopes that one of the sous chefs in her kitchen will be promoted to guide a new generation.

Comerford will return to the White House in the fall, when the president and first lady will celebrate her at an event. Until then, she plans to travel with her husband to Chicago and to Nice, in France, where their daughter, now 23, is apprenticing under a pastry chef. The Comerfords are also moving to South Florida, where the climate is more like the one where Comerford grew up.

Comerford reflected on her career over black coffee, just across the street from the White House. She was dressed in a crisp white blouse with a sculptural bow tied off-center under her chin — a look reminiscent of a chef’s coat. She has several, she said.

As she slid into the booth next to her husband, a waiter dropped off coasters, each printed with presidential caricatures. Comerford quickly claimed her husband’s: an illustration of Vice President Kamala Harris wearing a pantsuit and sneakers, feet kicked up on the furniture.

“I want this one!” With a laugh, she slid her own, which featured Joe Biden, over to her husband.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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