The talented and always insightful and controversial Elisabeth Bumiller, the NYT's White House reporter, was this Friday's profile in the Hotline. (And, yes, for the record, we would have plugged the fantastic folks at Hotline here even if Fishbowl wasn't Hotline's date for the prom. So there.)

Born in Denmark, she started in journalism as a reporter in the Gulf Coast bureau of the Miami Herald, covering Everglades drug busts, the "soporific" Naples City Council meetings, and taking "a lot of pictures of pelicans."

Choosing to go far beyond the standard "my mom/dad/grandmother/grandfather" answer, if she could interview any deceased person Bumiller says she'd sit with Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, where she was once stationed for the Times and where she wrote one of her three books.

Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth" is her favorite book, "because it's an acerbic look at New York society a century ago that is as sharp and true as anything on the subject today," and her ideal last meal would be brunch: scrambled eggs, gravlox and bagels, creamed herring, roasted tomatoes, link sausage, coffee cake, orange juice, and coffee.

Lastly, Bumiller thinks that city's best seafood is the take-out crab cakes at Wagshal's deli in Spring Valley in Northwest Washington.