New Italian ambassador, Armando Varricchio, eases into the job with a lighthearted lunch

The new Italian ambassador, Armando Varricchio, speaks at a lunch on Wednesday. (Frances Stead Sellers/The Washington Post)

Arrive late for lunch. And then walk right in, interrupting a former White House chief of protocol in mid-sentence.

A faux pas? (Or passo falso, as this particular luncheon gathering might term it?)

Not when you are the new Italian ambassador and the person who delayed your entrance is the president himself.

Armando Varricchio presented his credentials to President Obama at the White House on Wednesday and then whipped across Lafayette Square to lunch at the Decatur House, where the White House Historical Association was holding a day-long symposium in partnership with the Italian Embassy and the National Italian American Foundation,  titled “Italy in the White House: A Conversation on Historical Perspectives.”

And what a lunch it was. Three courses, each modeled after dishes served at state dinners for visiting Italian dignitaries: endive and watercress salad, as prepared in 1964 for President Antonio Segni; Cornish game hen with lemon-caper demi-glace, which was on the menu when Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti came to Washington in 1976; followed by strawberry Chantilly, which was served four years later, in 1980, for Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga.

It was all set out in the house’s historic courtyard, where a clear-roofed tent created an atmosphere reminiscent of southern Italy and where three former White House staffers — Lloyd Hand, Lyndon B. Johnson’s chief of protocol, Anita McBride, Laura Bush’s chief of staff, and Cathy Fenton, her social secretary — regaled guests with a few of the what-can-go-wrongs and how-to-put-them-rights of White House entertaining (such as how to extricate a yappy dog from the dining room when the president is speaking.)

The new ambassador seemed well aware of the possibility for passi falsi in these, his first few days of U.S.-Italian diplomacy. His British counterpart (and friend) Sir Nigel Kim Darroch was caught in an awkward pose when he presented his credentials a few weeks ago to a relaxed-looking Obama, prompting the blood-hungry British media to joke about “our humanoid in Washington.”

But if there were any such slip-ups in the White House on Wednesday, Varricchio wasn’t letting on. He lauded instead the United States’ and Italy’s “common love of beauty,” and seemed ready to dive into the unusual political season.

Of the whirlwind day, he riffed on the political doings of his new environs: “What a Super Wednesday for me!”