Joe Lhota smelled smoke. And with reason — the mac and cheese casserole was on fire.
“Tamra, Tamra!” he called, and his wife flew into the kitchen, their daughter, Kathryn, at her heels. In one smooth motion, Tamra tossed her scarf to Kathryn, knelt down, whipped the smoking casserole out of the broiler and calmly scraped off the burned bits.
“You fixed it,” said Lhota, who can delegate with the best of them.
A relaxed-looking Joe Lhota cuddles on the family couch with 2-year-old Kathryn and his wife, Tamra, in their old Brooklyn Heights digs in 1993.
Joe, white shirt be damned, leans in for a taste of Tamra’s braised short ribs as they simmer on the stove.Photo: Tamara Beckwith/NY Post
“She has superpowers!” Kathryn answered proudly.
Indeed. In a rancorous election year, the Republican mayoral candidate’s fiercest supporters are here at home. While Dante de Blasio’s Afro and sister Chiara’s headbands may be the defining images of their father Bill’s campaign, Lhota’s “super pack” — his wife, their daughter and an exuberant Labrador named Lindy — has remained largely out of the public eye.
“We’re such a private family to begin with and I’m grateful that we’ve been able to maintain it,” says Kathryn, who’s spent all her 22 years on the same block in Brooklyn Heights, no doubt the lone Republican in her Montessori school. These days, the Georgetown grad works behind the scenes of the campaign, helping out with social media and visiting schools and senior-citizen centers with her mother.
“We like meeting and talking with people,” says the 52-year-old Tamra Roberts Lhota, “but it’s not the spotlight that draws us.”
A former neighbor calls the soft-spoken, honey-haired Tamra the yin to her husband’s yang: “Joe is the quintessential wisecracking New Yorker — Tamra is more spiritual and nurturing but just as smart as Joe.”
Look no further than the family’s bookshelves, where bios of Thomas Jefferson and LBJ flank several Bibles and A.N. Wilson’s “Jesus.” There’s also a wall lined with cookbooks.
Lindy the Lab — her red collar embossed “Joe Lhota for mayor” — leaps up for a treat on the family’s terrace, which has stunning views of downtown Manhattan.Photo: Tamara Beckwith/NY Post
Joe Lhota strikes a pose before a wall of books — many of them about history and politics but just as many about religion — in the family’s living room.Photo: Tamara Beckwith/NY Post
“I have as many cookbooks as I have scarves,” says Tamra, who’s amassed an impressive selection of the latter. An ardent volunteer, fund-raiser and a former seminary student — she just finished her master’s degree in theology — she’s also a skilled home cook and baker. In a world powered by Chinese takeout and pizza, her dinner go-to is Barbara Kafka’s book on roasting. Thanks to the high heat, Tamra says, “I can get it on the table in about 35 minutes.”
She was raised in rural Napa Valley, Calif., but her family hails from the South and Oklahoma — a world apart from the Bronx-born Joe, whose background is a melting pot of Czech, Russian-Jewish and Italian ancestors.
Tamra concedes she was thrown by her first dinner at the Lhotas’ when Joe’s mother asked if she wanted more gravy.
“I’m looking at the table — we’re having pasta — and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t see any gravy,’” Tamra says. “But they meant ‘sauce.’ It’s been fun introducing my in-laws to the kind of gravy you want more of over mashed potatoes and biscuits.”
They’ve been married for 25 years, following a less-than-storybook start, in 1986, when they were two financial wonks from Paine Webber on a conference call.
She was about to leave the firm to join the Reagan administration, Lhota recalls over lunch, slipping Lindy the Lab a piece of pasta.
That’s when he made his move.
“I was in Washington and called her and said, ‘You’re leaving! Wanna go out and have a drink?’ ”
“I sort of hoped it was a date, but it really wasn’t,” Tamra says, quietly. “I was . . . interested.”
Even so, she obviously made an impression because the next time he came to DC, he invited her to a New Year’s Eve party. True, he didn’t give her much notice.
“I called you when?” he asks.
On Jan. 1, 1994, Tamra and Joe — then Rudy Giuliani’s fund-raiser and deputy mayor, respectively — are in a festive mood as they celebrate Giuliani’s inauguration at City Hall.
Four-year-old Kathryn is all smiles beside her mother, Tamra, on the beach in Nantucket in 1995.
“Three o’clock in the afternoon,” she replies.
“So I called her at 3 o’clock that afternoon and said, ‘Hey, what are you doing tonight?’ ”
They stopped in at the party briefly and stayed up all night, talking.
Tamra says he has “an impish sense of humor” — which may explain the “US Senator Blutarsky” poster of John Belushi from “Animal House” that hangs in their bathroom.
Lhota used to scrawl devil horns on 8-by-10 photos of himself and fax them to Kathryn when he was working late at the office.
“We used to fax back and forth,” his daughter says. “He [also] has a great sense of shoes.”
Lhota casts an appraising eye at her feet.
“Those are slippers,” he notes (and yes, they were — she’d borrowed them from her mom).
“She’s so concerned I’m a metrosexual!” he says. “But I always know what to buy Kathryn for Christmas. Shoes.”
And he doesn’t do Zappos, either. “For me, but not for her,” he says. “I go to Marni on Madison Avenue.”
So doting a dad is he that when Kathryn was 3 and Tamra decided the family needed a piano, he came back with . . . a Steinway. Granted, he’d seen an ad for a factory sale, but it’s a Steinway all the same. Kathryn stopped taking lessons when she was 13, but her mother still plays when she can.
Father and daughter also went to every “Harry Potter” movie together.
Lunch at the Lhotas: Kathryn, Tamra and Joe sit down to homemade macaroni and cheese, short ribs, spinach and mashed potatoes (hold the gravy).Photo: Tamara Beckwith/NY Post
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full one,” he confesses. “I wake up every time Dobby shows up — he’s my character.”
Wait: The possible next mayor of New York City identifies with Dobby, the house elf?
“No, I like him,” Lhota explains. “I identify with Hagrid,” the giant groundskeeper. “Big guy with a heart of gold.”
Lindy wags her tail, her big brown eyes fixed on his as she hopes for another treat. Helpless, Lhota slips her more macaroni.
“A heart of gold,” Tamra says. “Absolutely!”
MACARONI AND CHEESE RECIPE
One of the Lhota family staples comes from the “Fannie Farmer Cookbook” (Knopf), updated by Marion Cunningham. “It freezes like a dream,” says Tamra Lhota, who’s shipped it off to their daughter,
Her mac and cheese is based on a recipe from “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.” The tasty dish features sourdough breadcrumbs and both white and yellow Cheddar cheese.Photo: Tamara Beckwith/NY Post
Kathryn, when she was in college. Over the years, Tamra’s tweaked this recipe — she uses fusilli instead of elbow macaroni, two kinds of cheddar (both white and yellow) and sourdough breadcrumbs. Then she pops it under the broiler for a few minutes, where, with any luck, it doesn’t catch on fire.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 1 ¹/₂ -quart casserole dish. Put ¹/₂ pound cooked fusili or elbow macaroni in the casserole, pour 2 cups bechamel sauce (recipe below) over it and mix gently with a fork. Sprinkle ¹/₂ cup grated sharp Cheddar cheese (mix of white and yellow) evenly over the top and spread ¹/₂ cup freshly made buttered breadcrumbs over the cheese. Bake, uncovered, until the top is golden and the sauce is bubbling, about 30 minutes.
BECHAMEL SAUCE (makes about 2 cups)
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir in 2 tablespoons flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the paste cooks and bubbles a bit, but don’t let it brown — about 2 minutes. Add the 1 ¹/₄ cups milk, heated, continuing to stir as the sauce thickens. Bring it to a boil. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste, lower the heat, and cook, stirring for 2 to 3 minutes more. Remove from the heat.
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