What a meal.

As you may know, I have a side-life as a food writer. I do “DeRusha Eats” segments for our Saturday morning news on WCCO, and I write for Minnesota Monthly magazine.

So I was most interested in what Chef Paul Berglund put on the menu on Friday for President Barack Obama at The Bachelor Farmer, the restaurant owned by the sons of Gov. Mark Dayton.

They started with non-alcoholic beverages (it’s a proper Minnesota lunch) of Sanbitter (an Italian soda), pressed orange juice, white verjus, seltzer and lemon. Sounds refreshing.

Then it was onto house-smoked pork breast, spiced pork rillettes (kind of like a pate), Dijon mustard, and chives from the rooftop of the restaurant and a puree of English pea and crème fraiche, radish, mint, and Parmesean.

The appetizer was followed by a salad course from Laughing Loon Farms, early summer vegetables and flowers, aged goat’s cheese, and pistachios topped with a cider vinaigrette.

The main course was a choice: salmon or chicken. The Copper River sockeye salmon came with a Choron sauce (béarnaise without tarragon or chervil, plus added tomato), new potatoes, grilled asparagus and tarragon.

The chicken was roasted with an arugula-bread salad, chicken confit, and pickled shallots.  I think I would have done the chicken.

The menu is really cool. It was designed by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s DesignWorks studio, the in-house, on-campus design studio.

The Bachelor Farmer’s owners, Eric and Andrew Dayton, shared a joint statement with me about the lunch: “It was a thrill and a tremendous honor to host the President in our restaurant.  And we’re incredibly proud of our entire team for the terrific job they did today.”