Where the Obamas ate on date night

last updated 8 January 2015

President Obama and First Lady Michelle recently ate at New York’s Blue Hill restaurant on a well-publicized date night, said Frank Bruni in Nytimes.com. The Obamas enjoyed a rare evening out. But, given that the First Couple have their own White House garden, the occasion also had to send out the “proper message” about how to eat “green”: Blue Hill is known for using ingredients that are “local, seasonal, organic, humane.” Of course, Blue Hill is also an outstanding restaurant, located in a quiet, dimly lit townhouse.

“And yet,” Blue Hill was almost too predictable a choice in a city filled with adventurous dining options. As the president sat down to dinner with his wife, “it would have been interesting to watch him bust loose” and dig into a New York strip steak at Minetta Tavern, an oyster pan roast at the John Dory, or a plate of fatty lamb at Resto. Instead, a man with a reputation for being “almost joylessly disciplined” around food chose a restaurant whose pleasures are “more like a hushed foreign film with subtitles” than a freewheeling Brian De Palma flick. Blue Hill’s food may be gorgeous, but it’s also often sexless, making you long for some charred skin or messy fat. Blue Hill is a restaurant for the brain, “not for the heart, not for the viscera.”