The first orders Walter Scheib III remembers receiving from Laura Bush’s new social secretary, Lea Berman, still ring in his ears: “We need to stop serving this country-club food.” Scheib, who was then the White House executive chef, was speechless for several moments before he finally blurted out, “We are not serving what we want; we are serving what the first family wants to have.”

Within two months of Berman’s arrival, in December 2004, Scheib was asked by the chief usher, Gary Walters, who is in charge of White House operations, to hand in his resignation. Scheib agreed to stay on until his replacement was found, but the next day he told The New York Times that he had been fired. As soon as the article was published the White House asked him to clear out immediately.

Quite a comedown, he admitted in a recent interview, from his days in the previous administration, when Hillary Clinton had charged this fiercely competitive, meticulously organized chef with bringing “what’s best about American food, wine and entertaining to the White House.” His sophisticated contemporary food was generally considered some of the best ever served there.

But he was quick to say he would only talk about his difficulties as long as it was clear that he has no complaints about Laura Bush.

Scheib has finished an engaging book about life at the Executive Mansion, The White House Chef, written with Andrew Freidman, to be published by John Wiley & Sons in January. Those who read it hoping for an expose will be disappointed. But the chef’s sympathies are not completely hidden.The chapter on the social secretary is another matter.

The first time Berman met Scheib she told him that she wanted the White House kitchen to produce meals like those her husband had enjoyed at one of Marco Pierre White’s restaurants in London. White, who once had three Michelin stars, has served everything from braised pigs’ trotters to truffled parsley soup with poached eggs.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m not sure the president is going to be big on that,’ ” said Scheib, who had made many an enchilada and grilled-cheese sandwich on white bread with Kraft singles for President Bush.

The White House does not deny that Berman criticized the chef and wanted him to change his cooking, but Susan Whitson, Laura Bush’s press secretary, said: “Part of the social secretary’s job is to bring the first lady creative and inventive ideas from the culinary world, and the social secretary would be remiss in her duties if she did not bring forward her ideas.”

Berman’s message was a different one than Scheib recalled hearing from Laura Bush herself: “Walter, we would like our food to be flavorful, generous and identifiable.”

Even before the Bushes arrived at the White House, the word had gone out that the president did not like “green food” or “wet fish,” as in poached, steamed or boiled, Scheib said.

When he sent Berman an informal menu that included hummus, a favorite of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, Scheib said, Berman wrote “yuk” beside it. And when she told him his vegetables were “always overcooked,” he was incredulous. “I was fairly certain I wouldn’t have made it this far in my career if I didn’t know how to cook vegetables.”

Before almost every White House function, he said, Berman would send him marked recipes from cookbooks and magazines, like Martha Stewart Living, along with instructions that he “make it look just like the picture.”

Stylists who work with food photographers have an arsenal of tricks and techniques that are unlikely to please anyone’s dinner guests. Food may be incompletely cooked so it will look better and sometimes it is not food at all. Aerosol shaving cream often stands in for whipped cream.

Despite accolades from the first lady just a month before Berman’s arrival, Scheib told The Times when he was fired: “We’ve been trying to find a way to satisfy the first lady’s stylistic requirements and it has been difficult. Basically I was not successful in my attempt.”

Criticism of Scheib followed him. Almost a year after he left the White House, an unnamed East Wing official told The Wall Street Journal that the chef had been fired because he showed “a level of arrogance” in preparing scallops for the first family though the president detested them. Scheib said it was news to him: “If we had been told not to serve them, we wouldn’t serve them.”

Today there is no bitterness in his voice when he talks about the last days of his 11-year tenure. Since leaving the East Wing, he has become a kind of star as a culinary consultant and speaker who has hundreds of inside White House anecdotes to share. His talks are booked well into 2007 and the meals that accompany them are based on his White House recipes and are prepared under his supervision.