Watch Barack Obama as Dining Critic

— -- Before he was president and had his own kitchen staff with a dedicated pastry chef, Barack Obama was a state senator in Illinois looking for a good bite to eat in his hometown of Chicago.

He did his part to drum up business for a restaurant in the South Side of Chicago during a newly unearthed segment from a restaurant review program on local channel WTTW where he showed how to remain diplomatic while doling out culinary criticisms.

"It's not gourmet cuisine but that's not why I go to Dixie Kitchen," Obama says in the video. "I'm not looking for some fancy presentation or extraordinarily subtle flavors. What I'm looking for is food that tastes good at the right price."

Obama's episode of the much-loved local show never aired, in spite of his on screen presence.

"He was such an eloquent speaker," Amanda Puck, the host for the first two seasons of "Check, Please!" told ABC News. "He was articulate, descriptive and he really stole the show with his on-screen presence."

Like many of the guests from the first few seasons of the show, Obama was a friend of the producer, Puck said, noting that she knew him and his wife, Michelle, from their frequent visits to another restaurant called Spago, which she operated at the time.

"He always loved the Chicago restaurant scene," Puck said.

Dixie Kitchen must have been in his rotation at the time, as he said during the WTTW review he said he'd already tried most of their dishes.

"I ordered the southern sampler just because I couldn't make up my mind," Obama said on the show.

Rather than greeting each table with a basket of rolls, Dixie Kitchen sent johnnycakes, a savory relative of the pancake, out in baskets. Obama deemed them "dangerous" because he would fill up on those.

"I've learned from some past mistakes," he joked.

Another danger? It was so popular, Obama said, that customers are going to be "waiting for a while working up an appetite."