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Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesFormer President Bill Clinton and President Obama exited Il Mulino, a Greenwich Village restaurant, on Monday.

Updated, 2:37 p.m. | President Obama met former President Bill Clinton for lunch at Il Mulino, a Greenwich Village restaurant at 86 West Third Street, on Monday afternoon after delivering a major address at Federal Hall marking the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and urging Congress to pass stronger financial regulations.

The two men walked out of Il Mulino at 2:20 p.m., after being inside for about an hour and a half.

They smiled and talked during a 15-second photo opportunity, before Mr. Obama got into his limousine. Asked how the lunch went, only Mr. Clinton responded, saying: “It was good. It was Il Mulino, how could it not be?”

What did they have?

“We had fish, pasta and salad,” Mr. Clinton said as he turned to leave, smiling and waving at a few reporters on the sidewalk. “It was very healthy. Even I was healthy.”

The topic of the lunch remained unknown. It was just the two men at the table, aides said, with no advisers joining them. The restaurant appeared to be closed to other diners.

At 2:30 p.m., the motorcade rolled back to the Wall Street heliport to return to Kennedy International Airport and then to Washington.

The restaurant, which opened in 1981, is south of Washington Square Park and sits amid the buildings of the New York University campus. Reservations are hard to come by.

Frank Bruni, The Times’s former restaurant critic, wrote of Il Mulino on the Diner’s Journal blog in 2006:

For more space, more invention and more restrained portions and sauces, you go elsewhere. But for trend-resistant cooks and tuxedoed waiters eager to pummel you into gastronomic submission, you go to Il Mulino.

Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesA man held a placard outside Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan on Monday as President Obama delivered a major speech on the financial crisis.