For a date night with my girlfriend, we go to Zuma for Japanese.

Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys… Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at grandma’s house… and a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both.

I make decisions all day, so it’s nice for a woman like me to go to dinner and have the man take the menu and say, ‚Let me order.‘ Other women would be offended by that, but I’m like, ‚Good. Because I can’t make one more decision today.‘ I want someone to rub my feet without being asked.

The great thing about McDonald’s is that they have a lot of different things on the menu. I love their salads.

Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.

The thing about impressing your girlfriend is that when you do something like a private island in Fiji, it’s all downhill from that point.

For a dinner date, I eat light all day to save room, then I go all in: I choose this meal and this order, and I choose you, the person across from me, to share it with. There’s a beautiful intimacy in a meal like that.

My favorite kitchen was the Japanese and the Italian kitchen.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‚Oh no, it’s on the house.‘

When I go to a restaurant, yeah, I know that a line is probably going to form in front of the table, but didn’t I always wish for that? Yeah, I did.