Austin Dining Recommendations for Hillary and Barack

Okay, the big night is at hand. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are going to square off in an Austin debate with the future of the Democratic presidential nomination at stake. Duly noted.

But the really burning question is where in our fair city are they going to dine? Or perhaps to couch it in culinary logic, where should they dine based on their political ideologies?

Obama is the candidate, so he says, who will unite all the disparate groups out there in fractious old USA. He will fuse, if you will, all the dissenters into one united front. So what better place for him to dine then Austin’s preeminent fusion restaurant, Bistro 88 on Bee Caves Road. Chef Jeff Liu has fused European and Asian flavors with great success. So this would seem to be a natural. Another good choice would be Saba Blue Water Café on 4th St. Lots of fusion going on there as well. And then, for breakfast, because he is sometimes accused of being long on sophistry and short on substance, he should head over to Cisco’s for breakfast and sit at the fabled Liar’s table.

Clinton is the candidate, so she says, who will get things done because she knows how to work the system to get what she wants. She’s also trying to distance herself from husband Bill. So the first thing she needs to do is head over to Guero’s on South Congress and emphatically announce that she will not be ordering the Presidential plate named after her husband. Then she should head over to either Eddie V’s or The Shoreline Grill. These are two restaurants where serious corporate and political players hang out and in fact, get things done. In fact, George W and his brother Jeb were at Shoreline on election eve in 2,000 (remember that night where Al Gore won and then didn’t win?). Rumor has it that after the TV announced that Gore had won Florida, the two men were seen huddled outside in a hallway for quite some time.