McCain and Obama's favorite restaurants
DINING | What McCain and Obama's favorite restaurants say about the candidates
Political commentators are busy analyzing the presidential candidates' words for hints about the real Barack Obama and John McCain.
We gastronomers have a better way of penetrating the campaign spin. We take the approach of that proto-food-blogger Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), who said, "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."
(John H. White, Sun-Times/Brendan Moore/AP)
We believe that a candidate's taste in food is a more reliable indicator of character than the carefully strained statements issued in this atmosphere of gotcha and gotcha back. So we have worked our sources and come up with the names of the candidates' favorite restaurants in their home states. We have tried them out and assessed what an appetite for their offerings might mean about two men with a 50-50 chance at spending the next four years ordering meals from the White House chef.
As far as we could determine, McCain is a regular-guy diner-out, happy to follow Arizona custom with a Tex-Mex combo platter but also loyal to the modestly adventurous gourmet food available near his ranch north of Phoenix. The Obamas' favorite spot for a night out in Chicago is the alta cocina Mexican restaurant Topolobampo, said Michelle Obama spokeswoman Katie McCormick Lelyveld.
Chicagoans know Topolobampo as the quieter, slightly classier sister restaurant of Frontera Grill, both owned by award-winning chef Rick Bayless. Sun-Times restaurant critic Pat Bruno has praised its "creativity and quality."
For a simpler bite, the Obamas turn to RJ Grunts, a cartoony Lincoln Park emporium of burgers, ribs and Tex-Mex standards, the spokeswoman says. On her own, Michelle Obama has favored the more cutting-edge food at Sepia in the West Loop neighborhood near the atelier of her suddenly famous dressmaker, Maria Pinto.
The candidates share an unsurprising taste, one that links them to tens of millions of fellow Americans. My friends, as McCain likes to say, the go-to food for both men is pizza.
When campaigning in Brooklyn, McCain dropped into Verrazano Pizza and bought a pepperoni slice, press accounts say. Obama opted for vegetarian pies (all-cheese and the classic tomato-and-mozzarella Margherita) at American Dream Pizza in Corvallis, Ore., says the blog Pizzas and Other Stuff.
And back in Chicago, Obama's idea of a fast meal is to order from a scruffy minimall pizza place near his South Side house called Italian Fiesta Pizzeria, the food site So Good Blog and other Internet chroniclers report. (A spokesman for Obama's campaign, Bill Burton, would neither confirm nor deny these accounts.) We found little to like at this cramped storefront place, just a window for placing orders and a thin-crust pizza that was gloppy and low on flavor.
Much more interesting on the Obamas' dining list is Topolobampo, Rick Bayless' superb little shrine to the full panoply of Mexico's cuisine. We have eaten there happily for years, enjoying its authentic, even scholarly versions of classic dishes such as chilaquiles and Yucatecan roast pork. Topolobampo is one of the reasons we think Chicago is arguably America's top eating city, with fewer high-end addresses than New York but a more stellar, dramatic pantheon.
From its diverse and creative menu, Topolobampo says, Obama often orders sopa azteca, a dark broth flavored with pasilla chilies, grilled chicken, avocado, Meadow Valley Farm handmade Jack cheese, thick cream and tortilla strips (see recipe above).
Sepia, the potential first lady's glam West Loop haunt (she ate there a few weeks ago), was new territory for us. We started with one of the restaurant's signature flatbreads, this one topped with applewood-smoked bacon, chunks of pear and crumbled blue cheese. We also sampled the chilled carrot puree with chive cream swirled on its mirrory surface.
As a nostalgic Great Lakes native, we were thrilled to find Sepia offered walleyed pike, moist and fresh as the northern waters from which it came, dressed up with wild mushrooms and a cashew vinaigrette. Other fresh and naturally produced items on the menu included elite Berkshire pork and artisanal domestic cheeses. If Michelle Obama has the chance to encourage this kind of food in the White House and can get Bayless to bring a Mexican touch to state dinners, the Obama administration would be a golden era for American gastronomy.
Cindy McCain's food tastes, meanwhile, are unknown. Little light was shed when the campaign posted recipes attributed to her on its Web site but it turned out they had been lifted from the Food Network. (The campaign blamed an intern.) So we fell back on the solid evidence of her husband's restaurant preferences. The McCain campaign confirmed that the candidate had taken guests staying at his Hidden Valley Ranch near Sedona, including vice presidential hopefuls Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Mitt Romney, to the Asylum, a restaurant in the gentrified former ghost town of Jerome. The senator, who grills ribs and chicken himself for guests at home, ordered calamari salad at the Asylum, the restaurant told reporters.
We settled in for a late lunch in the neo-Victorian dining room of the Asylum. The calamari weren't especially crisp and the pastrami sandwich in its white-and-brown swirl bread was awfully lean. What we really liked was the Asylum's signature dish, a dramatically spicy roasted butternut-squash soup. This was a tip of the sombrero to Southwestern regional food but smooth enough to fit on a gourmet menu such as Sepia's.
Our waiter said McCain came in often to the Asylum and almost always ordered the BLT, which, like the restaurant, dips its toes into the wider world of fancy food. The Asylum's kitchen uses ciabatta for its BLT and serves cottage cheese on the side. "It's not the most exciting thing," the waiter mused. But we admired chef Richard D. Pasch's unpretentious efforts to bring sophistication to the Verde Valley.
When the McCains are in Phoenix he likes to go to Tee Pee, says a spokeswoman for the senator's campaign. The beer at this Tex-Mex saloon was very cold but the enchiladas with rice and beans were a disappointing mess of cheese and flabby tortillas. This was the "presidential special" ordered by George W. Bush on Jan. 21, 2004, a date commemorated on a wall with a picture of the event.
Is McCain's loyalty to Tee Pee a sign that he would continue the policies of the current administration? We like to think it is the big, crispy homemade chips and forthrightly spiced salsa that attract him, not the W-sanctified enchiladas. And that his documentably diverse, unpretentiously food-forward enthusiasms are the true signs of his inner gourmand and leader.
Wall Street Journal