Obama and Bill Clinton eat food (fish and pasta -- not McRibs)
President Obama and former President Clinton had lunch today at a swanky Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. The two leaders discussed health care and the economy during a 90 minute lunch.
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What do you do after giving a speech slapping down unsavory Wall Street executives? You hook up with former President Clinton and grab some food. After all, you're in New York. And President Clinton likes to eat.
So that's what President Obama did today. Now before you criticize us again for reporting that President Obama eats food -- like you did when we reported he likes cheeseburgers or when we reported he likes hamburgers, you can read about today's Wall Street speech here.
Now, on to the food...
With Bill Clinton involved, you might think they ate at McDonald's. The former president liked the Golden Arches. So much so that the late great Phil Hartman parodied Mr. Clinton's preference for the now extinct McRib sandwich on Saturday Night Live a few years ago (video below).
Although it would have been more entertaining, they didn't eat at McD's. Instead they ate at a swanky Italian restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village called Il Mulino. Hard to get in? Yes. Expensive? Very. Snooty? Absolutely. Do people love it? Four and half stars is the average rating on Yelp.
What's it like? Business Insider's John Carney describes it as "...pretty much always packed, often with large men tightly squeezed into small spaces."
Not today, however. Obama and Clinton had the place to themselves -- the restaurant was closed down to accommodate the presidential duo. Details about the lunch are slight. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said they talked about health care and the economy.
It was Obama's idea to get together for lunch, Gibbs explained as they flew back to DC.
"The president mentioned first getting together for lunch ... when they spoke just as President Clinton had come back from North Korea," Gibbs said. "The original hope was to try to get together for lunch last week when the President was up here for the Cronkite memorial, but because of the speech to Congress, we figured it would be an event that would be good to do on this trip."
As for the choice of cuisine, it sounds like they ate pretty light. "We had fish, pasta and salad," Clinton told reporters after the 90-minute meal. "It was very healthy. Even I was healthy."
That's all fine and good. We still prefer the Clinton of old -- the McRib era...
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