The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House

by Ben Rhodes

That night, we’d arranged for Obama to have dinner with Bourdain at a small local restaurant that wasn’t getting advance notice, so it would be filled with whoever showed up there on a random weeknight. “He’s the guy who wrote that book, right?” he asked. “Yeah, Kitchen Confidential.” I explained to Obama about how much I’d come to like Bourdain’s shows. “His philosophy isn’t that different from yours. If people would just sit down and eat together, and understand something about each other, maybe they could figure things out.” “So we’re doing this for you?” He laughed. At the restaurant that night, I sat with a small number of staff and Secret Service in a room adjacent to where Obama and Bourdain ate bowls of bun cha and spring rolls. I had headphones that allowed me to listen to their conversation. Sitting in this tiny room with colleagues who’d become close friends, sipping broth, beer, and noodles, thousands of miles from home, I felt a sense of peace. It was an apt metaphor for my experience of the presidency itself—just offstage, eating the same things, hearing the words but not the principal participant.