Unlike Obama, Trump visited only 1 DC restaurant in 4 years, that too his own
In 2016, he had told attorneys that "there aren't that many" great restaurants in Washington as part of a deposition in a lawsuit with celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian.
New Delhi: Donald Trump who leaves his presidency has never in his four-year term in office attempted to be part of the local community. A case in point is that unlike his predecessors, Trump has visited only one restaurant – the one in his own Pennsylvania Avenue hotel.
While former President Barack Obama was known for hitting all the trendy hotspots for date nights, Trump, who is known for his love of fast food, has never stepped into a DC fast-food joint. He, however, had once sent a former bodyguard to make McDonald’s runs and even catered White House events with Burger King and Domino’s.
According to a report in Washingtonian, Trump is a creature of habit as when he does venture out for a meal at the Trump hotel’s steakhouse, BLT Prime, he pretty much always orders the same thing: shrimp cocktail, fries and well-done steak.
He did this because here he knows he will get exactly the food he wants in the way that he wants, along with fans cheering him on.
In 2016, he had told attorneys that “there aren’t that many” great restaurants in Washington as part of a deposition in a lawsuit with celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian. In 2017 he said in an interview on the Larry O’Connor Show, “In Washington, you do have some great restaurants, and I’m going to start going to them,” Washingtonian said.
He said that he would start visiting other restaurants too.
“I was accused the other day. Well, when I leave the White House, which is seldom, I always go to my hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, and they say, ‘He should go to other places.’ And I never thought of it. And I’m going to start doing that. I’m going to go around.”
In 2019, Trump said that he along with First Lady Melania Trump would stop by at the Michelin-starred Inn at Little Washington while awarding the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal to Chief Patrick O’Connell. However, he is yet to step into the restaurant.
The magazine Washingtonian opined that “there aren’t a lot of places around DC where he would have been welcomed”.
“If he wasn’t outright asked to leave–like former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was at Virginia’s Red Hen–he’d likely have been met with booing and cursing from other diners. And any restaurant that hosted him–no matter its bipartisan stance–would have no doubt faced backlash by mere association,” the magazine opined.