by Todd Kliman

My inbox was nearly gummed up this week with friends and family writing to ask if I'd seen the new video from Barack Obama making the rounds.

Pronouncements from Barack the putative economic savior? Wise words from Barack the cool-headed healer of our bitter partisan divide?

Nope, shrewd judgments from Barack the food critic.

The President-elect and his thoughts on Dixie Kitchen, after the jump...

 

The clip is from a Chicago program called "Check, Please!," a roundtable discussion that invites amateurs to pick their favorite restaurants. The show will mark the anniversary of its 100th episode by airing the show tonight (Friday). The preview is in the clip above.

In August 2001, Obama, then a state senator from Illinois, was joined by a firefighter and a retail buyer, who dished about a downhome Southern joint called Dixie Kitchen.

It's a fascinating glimpse of the Man Who Would Be President, who speaks with remarkable ease about a subject with which he is not generally known to be familiar, while also displaying a deft common-man's touch.

Deliberative by nature, inclined to weigh his words before speaking, the former Constitutional law professor is not prone to revealing much about himself, but talking about a soul food kitchen, he seems freer and more animated than usual.

He owns up to a bout of indecision (unable to "make up my mind," he tells the roundtable, he opts for the Southern sampler), admits to downing the johnny cakes too quickly ("I've learned from some past mistakes, that I've got to be cautious ... Those johnny cakes, they'll get you early, and then you won't have room for the peach cobbler") and works a plea for community awareness into a statement about value ("Restaurateurs who are out there, [I] just want to let you know if you give good value and you're not too expensive, that in fact you can do some business out on the South Side of Chicago. ... I want to see our small business owners succeeding").

Wisely, he doesn't make the mistake a lot of critics do in projecting his wishes onto the restaurant, but rather, judges the place against its own intentions. "It's not gourmet cuisine. But that's not why I go to Dixie Kitchen, you know? I'm not looking for some fancy presentation or, you know, extraordinarily subtle flavors. What I'm looking for is food that tastes good, at a good price."

All in all, a brilliant performance. Don't believe it? Here's another clip:

So why did WTTW never air the episode — a decision that, seven years later, takes on echoes (okay, very, very subtle echoes) of The Manchurian Candidate?

Because, says the show's producer, David Manilow, the suave state senator was too brilliant.

In other words, Obama was not believable enough as an amateur. "It was unbalanced," said Manilow, "to put it charitably."

I think I speak for all food critics when I say: Manilow made the right call. We don't need the competition.

Todd Kliman is a James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic and the food and wine editor of Washingtonian magazine. The Wild Vine, his book about the Rosetta stone of American wine, is due in 2009.