It was there that we saw a steady stream of familiar faces coming in to enjoy some food, with credentials dangling from their necks, and probably some great stories as well.
Now it's one thing to say that we saw this Congressman or that Senator, or that famous person, but it's another to get a picture, right?
In order to get those pictures, I had the able help of the wife of Neal Boortz, the Amazing Donna, who kept fiddling with her own credential long enough for me to get the perfect shot.
On the left, you can see Donna posing most expertly, while your reporter shifts the camera at the last second to get the arrival of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert on the right, and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on the left.
For those who might not remember, DeLay left the Congress under a legal cloud, and remains under scrutiny in the investigation involving convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Earlier on Wednesday, both former leaders attracted a huge amount of attention as they walked through Radio Row over at the convention site.
A few minutes later, Donna was called into action again, as Karl Rove, former Presidential Counselor to George W. Bush entered the restaurant and made a beeline for the DeLay-Hastert table.
You can see the top of Donna's hair in this photo, as she again mimed for the camera, acting like we were taking the best photograph ever attempted in the St. Paul restaurant.
While the trio of DeLay, Hastert & Rove made for some interesting chatter, there were other big wigs who made their appearance as well.
At one point, Belinda swore that she had just seen "that ABC News guy." She finally refined that to "Ted Koppel," who no longer works there.
But upon further review, I saw it was Sam Donaldson. We quickly realized the reason why Belinda was having some difficulty determining who was a few tables down.
Just take a look at this picture! I do have to say on behalf of Belinda, she was in pretty good shape a few hours later....
Being that we were at the St. Paul just hours before the acceptance speech of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, we were a bit suspicious when the waitress told us that the dessert special was "Baked Alaska."
But they insisted that it had been on the menu for a few weeks, even before the Governor was added to the Republican ticket.
Belinda was very happy to have the restaurant chieftain come over and light the thing on fire, because her hands were a little chilly in this Minnesota climate.
There's nothing like lunch with your dog tired colleagues, some wine for Belinda, an aptly named dessert and then some surreptitous photographs to help liven up Day 3 of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. After finishing our work with Neal Boortz on Wednesday, we decided to head ...
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