However, Mikoyan eventually left for Washington, which was the first time a senior governing member of the USSR's Council of Ministers visited the United States on a diplomatic mission to its leadership. Furthermore, Mikoyan approached the mission with an unprecedented informality, beginning with phrasing his visa request to US Embassy as "a fortnight's holiday" to visit his friend, Mikhail Menshikov, the then Soviet Ambassador to the United States. While the White House was taken off guard by this seemingly impromptu diplomatic mission, Mikoyan was invited to speak to numerous elite American organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Detroit Club in which he professed his hopes for the USSR to have a more peaceful relationship with the US. In addition to such well received engagements, Mikoyan indulged in more informal opportunities to meet the public such as having breakfast at a Howard Johnson's restaurant on the New Jersey Turnpike, visiting Macy's Department Store in New York City and meeting celebrities in Hollywood like Jerry Lewis and Sophia Loren before having an audience with President Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Although Mikoyan failed to alter the US's Berlin policy, he was hailed in the US for easing international tensions with an innovative emphasis on soft diplomacy that largely went over well with the American public.