PARIS (Bloomberg) – It was a routine romantic Parisian dinner for two –a quiet evening at the 101-year-old La Fontaine de Mars on Rue Saint-Dominique – until the public discovered that the American tourists sipping house Bordeaux in the neighborhood restaurant's second-floor room were Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and a Secret Service food taster.

Now, more than two weeks after the Obamas' supper of southwestern French cuisine – lamb, foie gras and steak with shallots – brought Paris to a halt, La Fontaine de Mars proprietor Jacques Boudon says that his phone hasn't stopped ringing and that he recommends summer visitors make reservations at least one week in advance.

"We're fully booked," he says.

When the president of the United States chews, people want to taste what he's eating. Shortly after Obama drove off into the night, Boudon offered up another reason why Obama's visit bestowed mythic status on La Fontaine de Mars. "I saw God before me," Boudon told reporters.

Even by the stylishly haughty standards of Paris, where slews of neighborhood chefs pay scant attention to visiting US corporate chieftains and Hollywood superstars, the fallout from Obama's determination to take his wife to a sidewalk restaurant for a heavenly French meal continues to resonate.

The debate still rages between sips of morning hot chocolate at Cafe de Flore and at all hours of the night in Internet chat rooms. It centres on whether the Obamas' romantic meal was romantic enough for Paris and, perhaps more to the point, whether political pundits and restaurant critics will ever be able to give Obama a pass on where he takes his wife to dinner in the French capital.

"Obviously, a far better choice would have been Fables de la Fontaine, if you wanted good food!" observed a critic at the travel website http://www.tripadvisor.com.

"The taster was just there to make sure that soul food was disguised to look like elitist continental fare with a cover of arugula hiding the cheeseburger with Grey Poupon," railed an anonymous commentator on the Internet's Hinterland Gazette.

William Alfred Abitbol has heard all this before and he's advising everyone to stop gobbling. Indeed, the 59-year-old French chef has emerged from the fracas as something of an arbiter. Until 2007, Abitbol was a professional politician, a member of the European Parliament and vice chairman of that body's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

"Romantic dinners and politicians are my specialty," says Abitbol, who owns Alfred, an intimate 30-seat restaurant on Rue de Richelieu.

Abitbol may be the world's only known elected expert in romantic gastropolitical affairs. "The wisdom of the French people gave me this position and put me in the kitchen," Abitbol says. "I failed to get re-elected."

Nowadays, he grills a 36 euro ($50.51) veal chop and, for a touch of romance, serves appetisers garnished with sprigs of edible violets. "Politicians eat anything, so long as somebody else is paying for it; they're like horses feeding at a hay trough," says Abitbol, who honed his cooking skills as a teenager. "But a politician dining with his wife in Paris, well, that's a completely different circumstance."

Like everything else in Paris, a romantic dinner is judged by more than what's on the menu. How you arrive at the restaurant is just as important and, Abitbol says, a presidential motorcade doesn't cut the mustard.

Reaching Alfred – hand-in-hand – usually requires a couple to stroll across the lush Palais Royal gardens and spend a few moments gazing at the architectural splendor of the 310-year-old Comedie-Francaise. The second-floor restaurant's windows, decorated with boxes of small roses, are big, airy and look out on to the cafe scene below and the Art Deco railings of the Theatre du Palais Royal.

"That's a problem for a politician: My windows are too big," Abitbol says. "Windows are a particular issue for American politicians."

So are French desserts, according to "The Presidents' Cookbook," a history of dining at the White House by Poppy Cannon. Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, said William McKinley shows all the backbone of a chocolate French eclair. After eight years of US politicians trying to rebrand French fries as "freedom fries," Abitbol says Obama's resolution to dine out in Paris was nothing short of a culinary profile in courage.

"But you don't decide on a French restaurant based on window security," he says.

As Abitbol tells it, Obama wasn't entirely wrong to take his wife to La Fontaine de Mars. It's the sort of restaurant where a waiter pours a glass of wine quicker than you can ask and daily specials, such as what's perhaps the spiciest steak tartar in Paris, are reasonably priced at 20 euros. As for the "pommes frites," French President Nicolas Sarkozy occasionally orders a side dish of La Fontaine de Mars's fries.

On the controversial French dessert front, however, it's a toss up between Alfred's plate of wild strawberries with virgin olive oil and basil ice cream and La Fontaine de Mars's signature wild strawberries slathered in pistachio cream with a dollop of pistachio ice cream at the bottom of a glass goblet.

"Had the White House consulted me," Abitbol says, swirling a glass of 2006 Chateau la Becasse Pauillac in the rays of a setting sun, "I would have advised the Obamas to come here for dinner. We understand the needs of politicians. And I guarantee," he adds, "Alfred makes for better love."

For more information: La Fontaine de Mars, 129 Rue Saint- Dominique, 75007 Paris, see http://www.fontainedemars.com or call +33-1-4705-4644 and Alfred, 52 Rue de Richelieu, 75001 Paris, http://www. alfred-restaurant.com or call +33-1-4297-5440.