Los Gatos History

Guess who's coming to dinner?

President Clinton and Vice President Gore's 1993 visit to Los Gatos

By Dan Pulcrano

The advance teams were scouring the valley for an all-American place to eat, one that was comfortable and unostentatious and served food representative of California. Security was a consideration too. Never before, as far as Secret Service agents could recall, had the president and vice president of the United States dined together in a public restaurant.

President Bill Clinton's local point people, Apple Computer CEO John Sculley and financial executive Gloria Rose Ott, had named a handful of establishments from Cupertino to San Jose.

On Thursday night, three casually dressed thirtysomething types showed up at the California Cafe and received a 45-minute tour and cappuccinos from Assistant Manager Leslie Lathon.

"At first when they said they were from the White House, 1 said, 'Yeah, right,' " she remembers. "I asked them for a business card, but they said they didn't have any yet."

Early Friday morning, a contingent of about 20 people descended on the restaurant and asked more qualifying questions. Around noon they called and said, "This is it," according to Michael Kay, the firm's regional manager.

Less than 60 hours later, the country's two highest officials were eating salmon and chicken at Old Town. (Vice President Gore had the chicken.)

As the visit approached, executive chef Jim Benson flew back from Mexico to conspire with three other chefs to produce a menu liberally dosed with organic vegetables, roasted garlic, goat cheese, artichoke sauce and other reasons for the Eastern press corps to hate California. Le Boulanger provided a backdrop of baked goods. Dolce Spazio, a mango-passion fruit sorbet. Morrow's, "100 little chocolate computers with green screens."

The tables were appointed with small centerpieces of orchids and Calla lilies. More important, the very unpresidential Royal Crown cola gave way to caffeine-free Diet Coke, by executive order.

Special phone lines were installed. Staff members spent Sunday climbing ladders to dust the ceiling and adjust the recessed halogen spots. Cafe owners shooed away nosy journalists and crawled around on all fours with screwguns, lest an uneven table leg rock the foundation of the Free World. Or worse, blow a promotional opportunity.

As the sun set over the Los Gatos hills, the crowds lining University Avenue had worked themselves into a frenzy. There was so much screaming one would imagine that someone very famous -- say Paul McCartney -- was expected. They screamed at the two dozen tieless Silicon Valley executives, dressed, to generalize, in blue Oxford cloth dress shirts, hound's-tooth sports coats and V-neck sweaters. They screamed at the sight of the multi-antennaed Secret Service Darth Vadermobiles. Meanwhile, specially trained dogs sniffed for bombs in Old Town shopping center's topiary.

An occasional U.S. senator strolled by. At 7:40 p.m., a helicopter entered town airspace, followed on land by an armada of shiny black vehicles that jammed into the Old Town's horseshoe, clumsily running over curbs and backing into one another. President Clinton emerged from an armored Cadillac and with quick waves to some fellow Americans, then to the cameraed media, he disappeared into the cafe's double doors.

With most of America's technological leadership, two rungs on the free world's leadership succession and a naval officer carrying the nuclear war code "football" safely sequestered inside the aging former schoolhouse on an earthquake fault, the stubborn crowd settled in for a two-and-a-half- hour wait in the chilly night air.

Inside, the president warmly greeted his guests as the fireplace burned softly. They bonded over talk about high-speed data superhighways and technology policy. Roboveep Al Gore waxed poetic about the "gestalt" of gigabits. The execs gently raised the issue of new federal accounting rules on their stock options. Clinton got on such a roll that even normally loquacious server Bill Lister was afraid to interrupt and take his order. Go ahead, the server was instructed by the president's official food taster, a veteran of three presidencies. Three-mushroom soup was on the way.

The livelier, albeit less historic, party was hosted by the Matuliches at Steamer's across the way, where such well-connected Los Gatos celebrities as garbage man Jim Zanardi, corporate communicator Dee Cravens, lawyer Lynn Snyder, muralist John Pugh and former Neal Cassady sidekick Byron Bush, not to mention former Paratrooper Larry Shein, watched from window seats.

Los Gatos Mayor Joanne Benjamin stood behind the media pool with hubby Jim and first daughter Carrie, 12. The Fisher Middle School student had presented the town's key to Mr. Clinton at Moffett Field. "He's really nice," she confided to the Weekly-Times in what we had originally hoped would be an exclusive interview. Instantly. network kliegs emerged from the darkness and cameras encircled the future politician, who managed her first press conference with grace and skill.

At roughly half past ten, Clinton emerged from the restaurant. A thousand or so fans had been let onto the shopping center grounds, one by one, each having been "magged" by the Secret Service for weapons with a hand-held magnetic loop. The president flew up and down the garden paths and tiled boardwalks, grabbing arms, hands, fingers and babies, eliciting shrieks, and generally provoking uncontrolled hysteria unrivaled by any living human since the original Elvis.

As the guests exited, Clinton and Gore hopped into their limos. After completing right turns from the parking lot onto Los Gatos' University Avenue, the vehicles jerked to a halt. Out popped the President of the United States of America and his backup system. They're feeling great and bouncing back and forth in the middle of street, up and down the block, like pinballs in an arcade game. Totally, like, doing the moonlight stomp, shredding with unmagnetized Californians like never before. And probably never again.

Was national security compromised for a few magic minutes? You bet! And boy was it fun.

It was one of those Los Gatos moments in which the gap between the night sky and the mountains suddenly grows very big and a surreal ether fills the air. A little dangerous, maybe, but adrenaline doesn't come cheap. You're having a Spaulding Gray-style Perfect Moment, Los Gatos-style, and you know, without a doubt, that no other place on the planet feels exactly the same way.