President Obama, the First Lady, and
six guests who won a Dinner With Barack raffle,
ventured to Mintwood Place in Adams Morgan last night just as Northwest DC was getting hit with heavy rains.
A White House pool report tells us that among the diners who won the contest were David Garcia, an associate music professor at the University of North
Carolina; Ben Oakleaf, a wildfire smoke jumper from Idaho; and Latasha
Scurry, an assistant high school principal in Florida. The winners and the First Couple—dressed casually, he without a tie, she in a colorful skirt and blouse—ordered off the
regular menu (the restaurant is usually closed on Mondays). Chef Cedric Maupillier and his crew refrained from disclosing the individual orders of the President and First Lady, but the chef tells us the group enjoyed dinner.
“They cleared their plates; that’s what excited me the most,” says Maupillier. “It’s a great experience for our restaurant, and for Adams Morgan. If you can bring the neighborhood back to what it used to be, you can bring more people back to the restaurants.”
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
