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From a rooftop garden to neighborhood bakeries, the restaurant brings together the people and places that helped shape Chicago’s food scene.
Key Points
- Chef Cliff Rome designed the Obama Presidential Center’s dining program around Barack Obama’s request for simple, approachable food, featuring familiar dishes such as the Obama Family Chili, cedar-plank salmon, and the Obama Burger.
- Tafari’s Kitchen, the Obama Presidential Center’s main restaurant, honors the late Tafari Campbell, the Obamas’ longtime personal chef, with a menu featuring familiar dishes, produce from the Center’s rooftop garden, and offerings from Chicago food businesses.
- Rome views the food program as an extension of the Obama Presidential Center’s mission, using hospitality, local sourcing, and workforce development to strengthen the community and create a welcoming gathering place.
Chef Cliff Rome understood exactly what President Barack Obama wanted from the Obama Presidential Center’s food program the moment the former president sat down for a private tasting in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Obama didn’t want anything fussy. “He did not — I repeat, he did not — want folks having to open up a dictionary or Google to define what is this,” Rome says.
“It has to be good and it has to be simple,” Rome says the directive shaped Tafari’s Kitchen, the Center’s main restaurant, named in honor of Tafari Campbell, the Obamas’ longtime personal chef who died in 2023 and cooked for them at the White House and later in their home. The restaurant pays tribute to his role in their lives and the sense of welcome he helped create around their table.
Rome and Obama had crossed culinary paths a few times over the years — first at a private dinner Rome cooked at his art gallery Blanc, and later when Obama stopped into Peaches, Rome’s breakfast-and-lunch spot known for shrimp and grits and salmon croquettes. By the time they sat down for the tasting, there was already an easy familiarity between them, and a shared sense of what good, straightforward food could do for a place like the Center.
The menu reflects that approach. The Obama Family Chili appears exactly as the former president likes it. “The chili was the one thing that he enjoyed and said, ‘Don’t touch the chili,’” Rome says. Mrs. Robinson’s Red Rice — named for Michelle Obama’s mother — shows up as a tomato-rich rice dish with sautéed shrimp, bacon, and sausage. “He said, ‘It’s good. It’s not hers, but it’s good,’” Rome recalls, laughing.
Rome and his team, in partnership with Bon Appétit Management Company, built a lineup of dishes meant to be recognizable: lasagna, braised short ribs, cedar plank salmon, Moroccan chicken, a classic grilled cheese, and the Obama Burger. “Let’s simplify, let’s get these things consistent, and then we can build on those,” Rome says of the early conversations.
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The everyday menu remains focused and familiar, but Rome notes that the Center’s smaller, invitation‑only gatherings let him stretch creatively. “A lot of the things that are more elaborate, we save for private dining parties or those donor parties and special events,” he says.
 Herbs, greens, and produce grown on-site are used throughout the restaurant, connecting the food program to the Center’s broader focus on community. Credit: Talia Sprague / Bloomberg via Getty Images |  The garden helps anchor a food program built around local partnerships, seasonal ingredients, and community connections. Credit: Courtesy of The Obama Foundation |
One of the program’s foundations is the Center’s rooftop garden, which supplies herbs, greens, and produce for the kitchen. For Rome, it’s a direct link to his own upbringing. His grandmother kept a vacant lot next door for a garden “like we were down south,” he says. Saturdays were spent pulling weeds, harvesting vegetables, and learning that food was inseparable from the relationships built around it. Using ingredients grown on-site at the Obama Center is a way to bring that sensibility forward. “It goes beyond the cooking part of it,” he says. “It’s the relationship you’re building — with the land, and with the people you’re growing alongside — and knowing where your food comes from.”
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Local partnerships extend that idea outward. Brown Sugar Bakery, Justice of the Pies, Buttercrumb Bakery, and Four Star Mushrooms all contribute to the Center’s offerings. Rome lights up talking about the mushrooms: “Some of them are so beautiful I just want to take pictures. I was like, ‘How’d you grow that?’” The collaborations help tell a story about Chicago food that isn’t confined to a single dish. “I think it’s the overall experience,” he says. “We saved you a seat at the table, and you feel it when you get there.”
The center’s sense of welcome is central to how Rome sees the Center’s role in the neighborhood. For him, being part of the opening carries a deep feeling of gratitude and a sense of legacy — a chance to stand, as he puts it, “on the shoulders of giants” in his community. He also sees the Center as giving food an unusually visible place within a major civic institution. “It’s on par with the museum itself,” he says, a platform that allows the dining program to be part of the broader cultural experience on the 19‑acre campus.
Rome’s own culinary journey began at his grandmother’s kitchen table, where he learned to roll pie dough, pick greens, and absorb the lessons that came with being close to the stove. Today, through his hospitality institute Mise en Place, he’s working to build pathways for the next generation of cooks and food professionals. The Center, he believes, will draw more eyes to that work — and to the idea that food can be a foundation for community.
Looking ahead, he ties the food program to the Center’s broader mission. “I like to think that it means hope,” he says. “Hope that it’ll change the landscape of what we’re looking at now.”
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