WASHINGTON -- President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama dined with a handful of lucky grassroots campaign supporters on Monday evening, the latest iteration of the president's re-election "Dinner With Barack" fundraising contest series.
While the president's schedule did not disclose the location of the "local restaurant," all signs pointed late Monday afternoon to the Mintwood Place in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.
The dinner was scheduled to start at 6:15 p.m., according to the Obama Foodorama blog.
The early speculation about the dinner's location proved to be true. A presidential motorcade passed through Adams Morgan around 6:30 p.m. Members of the White House press corps later confirmed the location of the dinner.
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Dinner With Barack
According to the Associated Press, the president's guests were:
David Garcia, an associate music professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Ben Oakleaf, a wildfire smokejumper from Idaho, and Latasha Scurry an assistant high school principal in Florida. Each winner was allowed one guest. There were no other customers in the restaurant.
Washington City Paper noted the large police presence late Monday afternoon outside Mintwood Place, located on Columbia Road near Adams Morgan's 18th Street strip. City Paper's Jessica Sidman tweeted a photo of the tent outside the restaurant, presumably for security screening.
Twitter dispatches indicated that Columbia Road was closed adjacent to the restaurant, requiring the rerouting of some of the most heavily utilized Metrobus lines in the city, including the No. 42.
According to Mintwood Place's current menu, entree options include roasted pork for two with charcutiere sauce; cast-iron Amish chicken; whole boneless dorade with braised fennel and picholine olives; and New York strip steak frites, bordelaise sauce.
This spring, Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema awarded Mintwood Place with three stars noting that "[e]ven the most familiar-sounding dishes at the new restaurant in Adams Morgan surprise you with their rich treatments and vivid flavors."
Previous "Dinner With Barack" meals have been hosted at Boundary Road in the H Street corridor, Scion in Dupont Circle and Liberty Tavern in Clarendon. A lunch iteration of the fundraising meal was hosted at Lincoln restaurant, a few blocks from the White House.