The White House Job Ina Garten Left Behind For Culinary Creativity

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Considering her incredibly successful cookbooks and Food Network shows, it's easy to assume that Ina Garten has worked in the culinary industry her whole life. But the Barefoot Contessa didn't enter the cooking and entertaining realm until she was 30 years old. Up until she spontaneously purchased a specialty foods store in the Hamptons (which launched her career in food), Garten worked as a budget analyst in the White House Office of Management and Budget.

From 1974 to 1978, Garten worked in the prestigious position under two former presidents, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. While she told Stephen Colbert during an appearance on "The Late Show" that the position was interesting, she also admitted she didn't miss anything about the job at all, which primarily revolved around writing policies for the nuclear energy budget. 

Garten longed to do something creative. She got her chance when she made an offer on the aforementioned Hamptons store, which she'd discovered through an advertisement in the "New York Times." The same publication interviewed Garten in 1981, when she was three years into her new career. She admitted that her parents were in disbelief when they learned she was leaving a position in the White House to run a grocery store, but Garten knew it was what she wanted to do. Her days in Washington, D.C., were over, and little did she know, her unexpected dive into being a business owner would lead to a culinary empire involving 13 best-selling cookbooks, a beloved cooking show, a memoir, and millions of adoring fans all over the world.

Ina Garten came to be called The Barefoot Contessa because that was the name of the gourmet food store she purchased. But when she bid farewell to her job in the White House, she had only been cooking for a few years and had zero experience as a business owner. She didn't grow up cooking and only taught herself after she married her husband, Jeffrey. But she considers herself trained by one of the greats; she cooked her way through "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child, one of Garten's three dream dinner guests.

At the onset, it wasn't unusual for Garten to work 17-hour days at The Barefoot Contessa during the Hamptons' bustling summer season, where the blue-blood community flocked to Garten's delicious, ready-made foods and gourmet items. The chic store was even featured in the 2003 Nancy Meyers hit, "Something's Gotta Give." After owning and running the store for nearly 20 years, Garten sold it to focus on a new venture.

In 1999, she released her first cookbook, which featured recipes from her store, to rave reviews and best-selling status. By 2002, Garten began filming "The Barefoot Contessa" for the Food Network, which is where I first discovered her and immediately became a fan. In 2016, after writing many more cookbooks and filming several seasons of her show, Garten did return to the White House, but this time it was to film a television special called "Barefoot in Washington." Instead of working on a nuclear budget, she visited the White House kitchen and enjoyed afternoon tea with Michelle Obama.