The only thing “common man” about Trump are his childish eating habits.
And when the star appeared, you had to stick to the script. A “Standard Operating Procedure” document, recently obtained by Washingtonian, outlined step by step exactly what to do and what to say anytime Trump dined at BLT Prime, the hotel restaurant.
As soon as Trump was seated, the server had to “discreetly present” a mini bottle of Purell hand sanitizer. (This applied long before Covid, mind you.) Next, cue dialogue: “Good (time of day) Mr. President. Would you like your Diet Coke with or without ice?” the server was instructed to recite. A polished tray with chilled bottles and highball glasses was already prepared for either response. Directions for pouring the soda were detailed in a process no fewer than seven steps long—and illustrated with four photo exhibits. The beverage had to be opened in front of the germophobe commander in chief, “never beforehand.” The server was to hold a longneck-bottle opener by the lower third of the handle in one hand and the Diet Coke, also by the lower third, in the other. Once poured, the drink had to be placed at the President’s right-hand side. “Repeat until POTUS departs.”
Trump always had the same thing: shrimp cocktail, well-done steak, and fries (plus sometimes apple pie or chocolate cake for dessert). Popovers—make it a double for the President—had to be served within two minutes and the crustaceans “immediately.” The manual instructed the server to open mini glass bottles of Heinz ketchup in front of Trump, taking care to ensure he could hear the seal make the “pop” sound.
Garnishes were a no-no. Melania Trump once sent back a Dover sole because it was dressed with parsley and chives, says former executive chef Bill Williamson, who worked at the restaurant until the start of the pandemic. Trump himself never returned a plate, but if he was disappointed, you can bet the complaint would travel down the ranks. Like the time the President questioned why his dining companion had a bigger steak. The restaurant already special-ordered super-sized shrimp just for him and no one else. Next time, they’d better beef up the beef.
“It was the same steak. Both well done. Maybe it was a half ounce bigger or something, I don’t know,” says Williamson, who had previously run the kitchens of DC staples Birch & Barley and the Riggsby. The chef had always prepared a bone-in rib eye or filet mignon for Trump. After Steakgate, he switched to a 40-ounce tomahawk. Trump would never again gripe that he didn’t have the greatest, hugest, most beautiful steak.
One more thing. Don’t forget the snacks. A tray of junk food needed to be available for every Trump visit: Lay’s potato chips (specifically, sour cream and onion), Milky Way, Snickers, Nature Valley Granola Bars, Tic Tacs, gummy bears, Chips Ahoy, Oreos, Nutter Butters, Tootsie Rolls, chocolate-covered raisins, and Pop-Secret.
The whole SOP reads like a pop star’s rider, which is apt for a place that served as center stage for the Trump drama and its entire cast of characters. Now, though, the Washington hotel is in the process of figuring out its next act. In 2019, the Trump Organization started trying to unload it for a reported $500 million—a number that industry pros reportedly balked at even before Covid devastated the hospitality world. Between the pandemic, Trump’s defeat, and the fallout from the US Capitol attack, the hotel’s cachet has plummeted since then. A financial disclosure released at the end of Trump’s presidency shows that the property took a 63-percent hit to its revenue in 2020.
If the hotel is ultimately sold, the new owner would likely start from scratch. And for the people who popped the ketchup and bussed the ungarnished plates, that means their jobs would be done. Well done.
But hey, it was a wild ride while it lasted!
Now veterans of the place are opening up about what it was really like behind the curtains of “America’s Living Room,” where right-wing operatives were treated like celebrities and political power determined the seating chart. If you weren’t in the business of Making America Great Again, well, sweetheart, you quickly learned to fake it. Working for the Trump hotel meant putting on a performance every night—right down to the gummy bears and popcorn.
First, always rehearse the night’s VIPs, a lineup that was as long and ever-changing as the President’s own roster of loyalists.
“Senators and cabinet members and all of their staffs and the President’s staff, important members of the Republican Party, megachurch pastors, MyPillow guy. He was a VIP, absolutely,” says former executive chef Shawn Matijevich. “The hotel would print us a book every day, if they were staying at the hotel, and it would have their pictures and their name and their job title.”
You had to know whom to suck up to—not always easy given the President’s Ferris wheel of allies. One time, before his break with Trump, attorney Michael Cohen tried to snag a table at BLT Prime without a reservation. The host didn’t know who he was and turned him away, leading the hotel’s managing director to scold the host’s supervisor. On another occasion, in the early days, the kitchen took forever with Hope Hicks’s order. She pulled the don’t-you-know-who-I-am card, letting the general manager know she was in fact Hope Hicks—you know, from the White House. The manager, who no longer works there, remembers apologizing profusely—then sending out a “dessert storm,” including a crepe soufflé and a cheesecake lollipop tree.
Another time, a busser’s apron got caught on the door of a private dining room, and he accidentally flung a ramekin full of steak sauce all over Arthur Schwartz, a GOP operative from New York who’s tight with Don Jr. The splatter just missed the President’s son.
“[Schwartz] came and cussed me out for a solid five, ten minutes, talking about how he was wearing a $10,000 suit,” the general manager says. “The hotel did pay for all the cleaning.” (Schwartz declined to comment.)
Perhaps the most notorious VIP was Rudy Giuliani, who had a regular table in the restaurant’s downstairs dining area. “It was pretty much his office. He was doing more paperwork there than eating,” Williamson, the chef, says. “Some days, he’d be there all day.” At one point, someone made it official and created a black-and-gold plaque that read RUDOLPH W. GIULIANI PRIVATE OFFICE. The restaurant would keep it behind the host stand and place it at his table before he arrived.
“The biggest pain in my butt was Giuliani,” says the former manager who dealt with an annoyed Hicks and a sauce-covered Schwartz (and who asked for anonymity to avoid blowback from future employers). “He was constantly in the restaurant. And I complained about it. The guy would come in, expect a table for ten at a moment’s notice at, like, 2 pm, when we’re not fully functioning. We don’t have the staff. But he’s the President’s lawyer, and what am I supposed to do?”
By contrast, Trump’s children were fairly low-key and polite. (The most salacious detail any former staff offered about Ivanka is that one time she showed up in yoga pants and indulged in a single margarita.) “They just came in, did their thing, and left,” says former assistant general manager Alyssa O’Clock. “Ivanka would sit with her back to the rest of the dining room. She didn’t really want to be seen there, necessarily.”
Tiffany also made occasional appearances for a mimosa-fueled brunch or a study break with Georgetown Law friends. Often, though, she was a no-show. “She made many reservations and didn’t show up for them for dinner,” a former manager says. “It was a pain.”
Catering to the right-wing bigwigs was less about showering them with freebies (although former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his wife might be greeted with complimentary bubbly) and more about highly customized service to feed their egos. The staff kept extensive notes on everyone who was anyone. For mega-philanthropist Catherine Reynolds, who was on Trump’s economic-revival council during the pandemic, diary-like records noted every preference down to how many olives she preferred in her martini. “I’ve worked in a few fine-dining places, but I’ve never worked somewhere where the VIP list was just so crazy,” O’Clock says. “There were a couple people where we had their entire order in our notes on OpenTable.”
Then there was lobbyist David Bockorny, a big Republican donor and Beltway operative since his days in the Reagan White House. He liked to get his morning coffee from the restaurant, but he’d show up before it was open. Instead of asking him to come later, “they decided we’ll just have coffee 15 minutes early because David Bockorny’s going to come,” O’Clock says. “Whoever was working those mornings knew: You need to be there on time, maybe a little bit early—this guy is coming in.”
Regulars such as Florida congressman Matt Gaetz and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell were always around the lobby taking selfies with fans. In the restaurant, some top White House officials including Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders preferred more private booths in the back. But generally, the place to be was a table along the balcony rail on the mezzanine, overlooking the lobby and its soaring ceilings. That’s where you might spot Meadows, or American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, or then–Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler. Though if you didn’t have political pull, looks could get you there, too. “I was told to just put the pretty people on the rails one time,” says a former employee. “And the ones with Birkin bags.”
