Obama, Restaurant Critic

Is there nothing our new president can’t do? The Chicago Tribune remembers that back in 2001, when a local station was preparing the pilot of a new food and restaurant program called Check Please!, the producer asked Obama to critique his local Hyde Park eateries, Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop. The result was never broadcast. According to the show’s producer, David Manilow, Obama was “too good—too thoughtful, too articulate, not enough of an amateur. He ended up dominating the conversation.” "It was unbalanced," he said, "to put it charitably." Now the Los Angeles Times has dug the lost Obama episode out of the archive and put it online. Lap it up.