President Barack Obama took a detour on his Asia trip Monday when he dined with celebrity chef and adventurous eater Anthony Bourdain in Vietnam.
Their meal and conversation will be featured in a September episode of CNN’s “Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown.”
After finishing up at Hanoi restaurant Bún ch? H??ng Liên, Bourdain tweeted that he had picked up the $6 tab on a shared “bun Cha dinner.”
Obama arrived in Vietnam on Sunday, kicking off his tenth Asian trip since entering the White House. After Hanoi, the President heads for Ho Chi Minh City, before making his way to Japan. He concludes his trip later this week in Hiroshima, where the U.S. in 1945 dropped the first of two atomic bombs during World War II.
Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site.
His meal with Bourdain offered a brief break from an emotionally and politically weighty schedule that began with the announcement that the U.S would lift a decades-old lethal arms embargo on Vietnam.
Obama’s soon-to-be televised appearance alongside an occasionally gory gourmand will not be a first — the President in 2015 was a guest of Bear Grylls on “Running Wild.” Among their culinary samplings: the gnawed remains of a piece of Alaskan Salmon left behind by a peckish bear.