Food shares stage with politics on new ‘Breaking Bread’ show

Lawmakers are getting a bite of bipartisanship as part of a new show focused on food and politics.

The aim of “Breaking Bread,” premiering at 7 p.m. July 4 on Bloomberg Originals, is to “try to amuse our democracy back to life,” says host Alexander Heffner.

In each of the series’ 10 streaming episodes, Heffner is seen crisscrossing the country and sharing a meal with lawmakers — whether it’s cooking up homemade elk fajitas with Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) or devouring homegrown bison, potatoes and strawberries with 2024 GOP presidential candidate North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — while putting some political talk on their plates. 

“You hear stories all the time of people on the Hill who say we used to have backyard barbecues with politicians representing both parties, and their families and kids. And there’s not an incentive for that type of interaction,” said Heffner, the co-author of 2022’s “A Documentary History of the United States.”  

“So the impetus driving ‘Breaking Bread’ was: How can we model that kind of discourse when everything seems to be pulling us in the opposite direction?”

The key to productive political conversations, Heffner said, turned out to be cuisine.

“Within our political discourse, the viciousness the vindictiveness, the vendettas — that’s not gotten us anywhere productive,” Heffner told ITK.

“Food — we all find sustenance in that. I think that was a shared experience throughout that we enjoyed these meals together,” said Heffner, who hosts “The Open Mind” on PBS.

“So as a step to forging consensus and alliances that can help better our republic, I thought, well, let’s try to build the political capital to get there. And that’s what these conversations were about.”

Some of Heffner’s culinary adventures include noshing on vegan chicken and waffles at a café in the Garden State with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.); “That vegan food was as good as any non-vegan food I’ve ever had.”

The show that streams on Bloomberg.com, a sort of mashup of CBS’s “Face the Nation” and Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” also took Heffner to a basketball court, shooting hoops with Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) before chowing down on cheeseburgers together. “I was impressed with Sen. Thune’s basketball skills, which put me to shame.”

Other episodes include eating pancakes with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), trying pulled pork plates and banana pudding with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and enjoying “exceptional” Thai food with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R).

“Each one of these people had a different approach to how they consume food, what they like, what they eat at home or in the Senate cloakroom,” Heffner said. 

It turns out, according to Heffner, that breaking the partisan gridlock in Washington could start with political power players “Breaking Bread” with one another.

The food he feasted on with figures on both sides of the political aisle, Heffner said, brought “a certain contentedness in the air that allowed us to access some of the more challenging discussions about how we get to effective bipartisan leadership together again.”