President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden walked to lunch in Washington, D.C. on Friday, visiting Taylor Gourmet, drawing throngs of onlookers and reporters.
The pair and a sizeable detail walked into the restaurant after crossing 17th Avenue.
Reporters began posting photos of the trip to Twitter around 12:35 p.m.
The restaurant is in the Huffington Post building on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Both Obama and Biden ordered sandwiches to go.
Ethan Klapper of the Post said that his colleagues were telling him that they were stuck across the street because of Obama and Biden’s trip.
The president used the opportunity to once again make a case for the Republican-controlled House to pass a short-term spending measure that would reopen the government without strings attached.
“This shutdown could be over today,” he said. “We know there are votes for it in the House.”
Obama reacted to a news report that quoted an anonymous senior administration official as saying that the White House was “winning” in the clash over the shutdown, and that the length of the shutdown “doesn’t really matter to us.”
“There’s no winning when families don’t have certainty about when they are going to get paid next,” he said in response to a reporter’s question.
Obama ate a macadamia nut cookie the Taylor Gourmet staff gave him. The sandwich shop is giving furloughed workers a 10 percent discount and a free cookie. Obama said he has to pay because he isn’t furloughed.
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, tweeted a hopeful message:
“Common ground: John Boehner really likes Taylor Gourmet.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
