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About a half-hour before his farewell address at McCormick Place Tuesday night, President Barack Obama was seated at an old haunt, the Valois restaurant in Hyde Park, talking for 40 minutes with another ex Chicagoan, NBC News anchor Lester Holt.

“It was the President’s idea to go to Hyde Park, to go to the Valois,” Holt said in a phone interview Thursday.

The resulting hourlong special, “Barack Obama: The Reality of Hope,” airs on NBC Friday night.

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It’s a story, Holt said, of “hope meeting the reality of governing in a pretty tough age,” and it includes candor from about the challenges of being the first African-American president and his surprise and disappointment at the November election result.

“He acknowledged that it hurt personally,” the anchor said, but Obama takes “long-term validation” in his administration’s achievements.

On a smaller matter Holt, laughing when told he is still the speaker on the video Cook County shows the jury pool, said that was shot more than two decades ago, when he was at WBBM-Ch. 2.

“I feel like I should call them up and volunteer to do a new tape,” he said.

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