Just for that day, the O'ahu fish salesman was accorded the title — and a memory that he'll always cherish. How he got there is a somewhat roundabout story.

Fraser is a former waiter who now handles restaurant sales for TJ Kraft Ltd./Norpac, a Kalihi seafood distributor best known for providing the fresh fish, poke, sashimi trays and such to Costco stores, as well as to Times Super Market here. But Norpac also air-freights local seafood to restaurants nationwide and imports and exports seafood from all over.

So it is that Fraser has chef friends around the country, men and women he talks with almost daily on the telephone. He knows their kids' names and parties with them whenever he travels to the Mainland. If they call him with an order by noon East Coast time, he can have their yellowfin to them by 10:30 a.m. the next day, packed in Norpac's signature multilayer boxes that provide both damage protection and temperature stability.

One of these chefs is Shane Cash, chef of Shelly's in Manhattan. Cash was talking with someone in the White House one day, who mentioned that, in all the guest-chef gigs they'd done in the staff dining room, they'd never done anything with Hawai'i. Cash immediately called Fraser and said, "You need to be part of this."

Then Cash got bigger ideas: Fraser shouldn't just send Hawai'i seafood for the event; he should prepare it, too.

Fraser smiles the dazed smile of a guy who still can't figure out how he ended up making poke in the White House. His first reaction was "Whoa!" but eventually he decided he ought to do it as a tribute to all the people he represents: the fishermen who work a cold, hard dangerous job; the guys in the plant who are there at 4 every morning; the chefs who hardly see their families because they're cooking every night; his boss, Tom Kraft.

He devised a menu: 'ahi poke Napoleon (taro chip, poke, garnish of edible Island-grown flowers), shoyu-wasabi marinated swordfish with a tropical fruit and Maui onion relish, North Shore beef in a teri-butter sauce with Okinawan sweet potatoes and Kahuku corn. Nalo Farms donated the produce; North Shore Cattle Co. the beef; the seafood, of course, was Norpac's.

He knew that if he was going to pull it off, though, he'd have to practice, practice, practice. He turned to an old friend, chef Danny Morioka, with whom he'd once worked. Morioka invited him into his kitchen at Aaron's Atop the Ala Moana and helped Fraser refine his techniques.

"I must have done this menu 100 times," Fraser said. Pause. "I'm not a chef!"

On Sept. 2, Fraser boarded a flight to Washington, with seven boxes of provisions and tools, including the white chef's jacket his chef friends insisted he wear. He was afraid that the chefs would think he was trying to claim the title without having earned it. But a chef's jacket is accepted and respectful attire in a professional kitchen.

Sept. 8 was the big day: Up at 5:30, quick tour of the kitchen with White House chef John Lara, pop some Hawaiian music in the kitchen CD player. Then Fraser and Cash made lunch for 30, of whom, he learned later, Vice President Dick Cheney was one. Security at the White House is so tight that he wasn't told until after the fact who was to be at the luncheon he served. He wasn't even allowed to peek into the dining room.

"When you do something like this, you're always waiting for something to go wrong," Fraser said. But nothing did. In fact, a couple of people asked for seconds on the poke course.

Things went so fast, he said, "it was over before it started."