White House Anthony Bourdain kept CNN in the dark on President Obama booking

When Anthony Bourdain learned that he would be sitting down for a meal with President Barack Obama, the decision was made to keep the booking quiet. How quiet? Not even CNN, which airs Bourdain’s series, “Parts Unknown,” knew that the president would be appearing on the show.

“We had been talking for nearly a year. It was very, very closely held,” Bourdain told Politico. “CNN did not know, the camera people did not know. Only a very tight group at [production company] Zero Point Zero, my partners, me and very few people at the White House. It was very closely held.

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“We were told not to tell anyone. It was a security situation,” the chef and author added. “The White House tells you don’t tell anybody, you don’t tell anybody!”

News of the booking came as it happened, when the White House press pool was parked across the street from the bún chả restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam, where Bourdain and Obama dined. That meeting, filmed in May, will be featured in the season premiere of “Parts Unknown,” scheduled for Sept. 25.

As with other non-news TV appearances for the president (think of the appearance on Bear Grylls’ NBC survival show), the idea to have Bourdain sit down with Obama came from the White House itself, and was more than a year in the works. Bourdain and his producers selected the restaurant they dined in. The check was for $6; Bourdain picked up the tab.

“I had a healthy skepticism of the thing from the get-go. I didn’t want to serve as a platform for a policy discussion, I didn’t want to present myself as a journalist, but if the president wanted to hang out and eat bún chả in a city I loved, I responded to him in the same way I would anyone, with excitement about the prospect,” Bourdain said.

Bún chả is a popular Vietnamese pork and noodle dish.

“This was not a formal interview; I am not a journalist,” Bourdain added. “I spoke to him as a Southeast Asia enthusiast to a fellow Southeast Asia enthusiast. And I spoke to him as some random knucklehead who watches the news like everyone else, and I spoke to him as the father of a little girl to another father of two daughters, who has access to a hell of a lot more information than I will ever have.”

Bourdain and Obama spoke about Southeast Asia, raising their daughters and the controversial topic of whether one should ever put ketchup on hot dogs.

“He gave me a surprisingly undiplomatic answer. He is clearly not running for office,” Bourdain quipped.