The 72-year-old top French chef, who has cooked for five presidents and become a fixture on the Washington social circuit, smiles at the memory and says he wishes the Clintons well as Hillary aims to seize the White House.  In his first ever interview, Mr Chauvet recalled the boisterous party the Clintons held on the exclusive Massachusetts island off Cape Cod that continued to 6am, accompanied by Bill Clinton's “wonderful” saxophone playing.  As for Mrs Clinton herself, Mr Chauvet said he would not be at all surprised if she becomes the next president. He said she was always laughing and smiling - far removed from the stern and defensive hard-nosed politician that she often appears to be.  "You can see when you talk to her - in her eyes - she seems very smart,” he said. “In some ways I like her better than Bill. I always think he was successful as a president because of her."  Over cigarettes and scotch, the modest Mr Chauvet - who will only take credit for being an “ok” French chef - clearly enjoys reminiscing about his long American career, and the Who's Who of American politicians that he has cooked for.  72-year-old Pierre Chauvet said the US presidents he cooked for were "much friendlier than the French. You cannot become friends with them - there is a barrier" Photo: Rachel Ray  Never starry-eyed and always true to his French roots, he was “happy to cook for these people”. But after 44 years of being the owner and head chef of La Fourchette and executive chef to Katherine Graham, the legendary publisher of the Washington Post, Mr Chauvet and his wife Jacqueline are ready to sell their £1.5 million ($2.4 million) restaurant - a celebrated bistro in the US capital’s Adams Morgan neighborhood - and retire.  Mr Chauvet grew up in south-west France near Bordeaux and still speaks with a thick French accent. He said it was pure chance that put him on a path that crossed with a range of notables including five men who served as US president as well as the most powerful female publisher in the world.  As a teenage apprentice chef, Mr Chauvet’s first job was with the Marquis de Cuevas, creator of the Ballet de Marquis in Cannes. He quickly moved on to cook for 65-year-old Henry Ford and “his beautiful young wife” at Ford’s villa on the Riviera.  “I hear your name being called from next door"  Mr Chauvet told the soldier to distract him, so he could add cream to a dish for Bill Clinton  It was during the stint with Ford that 19-year-old Mr Chauvet met Joe Kennedy Sr staying at the house next door. Kennedy treated Mr Chauvet and another young chef to a ride in his new Rolls Royce and introduced himself as the father of the new US president, John F. Kennedy. “That was really something,” Mr Chauvet recalled with wide eyes.  The next stop was the French Embassy in Belgium where, in 1966, visiting future president Richard Nixon would express his appreciation for Mr Chauvet’s turbot and lobster mousse.  Little did the young chef know that Nixon’s great nemesis would be Mr Chauvet’s future employer, Mrs Graham.  Before long, Mr Chauvet would land a green card and a job cooking at the Dutch Embassy in Washington and then went on to work for Mrs Graham in 1973, whom he describes as “very nice” and “very strong”.  After five years that included working through the Watergate Scandal and managing three dining rooms at the Washington Post headquarters, he was ready to open his own restaurant. The chef’s relationship with Mrs Graham was far from over though, and he continued to cook for her regularly.  It was in answering Mrs Graham’s call, in 1993, that Mr Chauvet’s French allegiance was tested. He recalls that Bill Clinton was on a special diet that excluded cream. But there was nothing for it, the sauce for his cod dish mush be finished with just that. A nervous Mr Chauvet was being watched in the kitchen by a military attache, with strict instructions over the president's dairy intake.  The chef needed a cunning plan to stay true to his culinary roots.  “I hear your name being called from next door,” Mr Chauvet told the soldier. As he left to answer the phantom voice, Mr Chauvet slipped the cream into the sauce, “Boom - it was good. It was a good dish,“ Mr Chauvet remembers.  As for Mr Clinton’s health regime, Mr Chauvet was not overly concerned. At that time, he explains, the President was reportedly eating up to 12 donuts a day. "A little cream wasn't going to kill him."  In another post-employment call for help, Mr Chauvet cooked for President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy. Reagan came into the kitchen and attempted to speak with Mr Chauvet in French.  “Natural, outgoing, very human,” Mr Chauvet recalled with a big smile. “I loved Ronald Reagan.”  Mr Chauvet says he was happy to cook for the American politicos. They were “simple, straight-forward people”, in his view. They were “much friendlier than the French. You cannot become friends with them - there is a barrier.”  Straight-forward may not be the way most would describe Henry Kissinger, but he did teach Mr Chauvet how to make a blueberry pie from scratch. “Oh, he was fun,” Mr Chauvet laughs about the man he describes as Mrs Graham’s “best friend”.  Or Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who was ordered out of the Martha’s Vineyard kitchen by Mrs Graham because she was spending so long speaking French to Mr Chauvet and was holding up the tennis match.  Mr Chauvet also cooked for Jimmy Carter at Graham’s Georgetown house and George H.W. Bush when he was director of the CIA.  Along with politicians, Mr Chauvet delights in his memories of journalists. The Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein had to be scolded for routinely taking up three tables in La Fourchette to spread out his newspapers. And neighbour Christopher Hitchens would stay late into the night talking about Paris and the Riviera while consuming a bottle of Johnny Walker Black by himself.  It has been an almost 50-year American adventure, but Mr Chauvet still has no interest in being a US citizen. “I am a Frenchman,” he says.  Now he must go prepare dinner for his granddaughters, “my little girls”.  What will it be? “Dover sole - I want them to eat fish.”  Will there be a sauce? “No, I don’t want them to get used to eating cream.”
Pierre Chauvet, who cooked for the Clintons and four other US presidents, is   now in his 70s - but will never forget his encounter with a 13-year-old   Chelsea