D onald Trump treated the question like a dare. “Will you visit a restaurant in DC?” a reporter asked during an Oval Office meeting with Poland’s president in September. “I might,” replied Trump. “Sure.” “You haven’t gone to one in either of your terms that wasn’t—” “How do you know?” Trump said. “You want me to prove you wrong? I think it’s something we could consider doing. I’d love to do it. I love the White House food, but after a while, I can see going to a nice restaurant. It’s safe.” “If Trump was to come, I’d be a little anxious because I don’t know what that would create or cause, you know?” At the time, the only DC restaurant Trump had ever visited during his two White House terms was the steakhouse in his former Pennsylvania Avenue hotel. And for many DC restaurant owners, that was just fine. Simply hosting the President, a deeply divisive figure, had the potential to turn any establishment into a political lightning rod—yet another headache in a migraine of a year. “If Trump was to come, I’d be a little anxious because I don’t know what that would create or cause, you know?” said Martin’s Tavern owner Billy Martin shortly after Trump’s remarks. His 92-year-old restaurant boasts hosting every President from Harry Truman to George W. Bush. Another local restaurateur put it more pointedly: “Lord. Have. Mercy. On. That. Restaurant.” Less than a week later, That Restaurant turned out to be Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak Stone Crab. “Here I am standing out in the middle of the street,” Trump told a gaggle of reporters at a closed-off intersection in front of the restaurant, surrounded by Secret Service, about a block from the White House. The President said he never would have been standing there three months ago—and certainly not a year ago, when DC was, he said, “one of the most unsafe cities in the country.” But now, he declared, “it’s as safe as there is in the country. The restaurants now are booming. People are going out to dinner where they didn’t go out for years.” Across the street, cheers were overwhelmed by boos and expletives from a growing crowd. Inside Joe’s, as Trump worked the room, a handful of activists who’d been tipped off in advance and managed to snag a reservation confronted him across a white-clothed table. “Free DC! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!” they yelled before being escorted out. Meanwhile, the restaurant itself was pummeled with negative online reviews—many posted before Trump and his entourage of cabinet secretaries and White House officials had even left the dining room. From the moment he was first elected in 2016, Trump changed the DC restaurant scene. Before his arrival, Washington’s unspoken code was that politicians could dine out—and otherwise go about their daily lives—more or less like anyone else, without being interrupted or harangued. In the same spirit, it used to be that restaurant operators avoided anything that might be construed as political. They were in the business of hospitality, after all, and didn’t want to make either side of the capital’s partisan divide feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. But as Trump became the main character of American life during his first term, polarizing and inescapable, area dining rooms became arenas for high-profile confrontations between government officials and the public. Meanwhile, at least some restaurants embraced the resistance zeitgeist, mocking the White House with Russiagate-themed pop-ups and happy-hour discounts for presidential firings. For the most part, however, Trump’s presidency was what people talked about over dinner and drinks. It didn’t dramatically affect the dining experience, or the industry behind it. This time around? Everything’s different. More extreme. And not only because Trump himself has finally ventured out beyond his namesake hotel. His allies and supporters are eating out in a flashier, more emboldened way. MAGA policies and politics are hurting bottom lines, one blow after another: a sweeping immigration crackdown, mass federal layoffs, yo-yo tariffs, the deployment of National Guard troops, and a government shutdown. Today, fear and anxiety have gripped the scene. The vibes are tense. And hardly anyone wants to talk about it publicly, for fear of politically motivated retribution or public backlash. “We’re in a place now where it’s dangerous and violent. The Latino community is getting scooped off of the f—ing streets heading to work,” says one bar owner who, like many others in this story, requested anonymity in order to speak freely without becoming a target. “Donald Trump ran on retribution. And, boy, is he giving it to DC.” “I Don’t Give a F— Who Knows I’m a MAGA” The Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue was the MAGA mothership when Trump first took the wheel of the country, a safe space where Trumpworld’s band of outsiders could rub shoulders and make deals over $29 old-fashioneds. Notably, it was one of the only places in deep-blue DC where the President could guarantee himself a standing ovation. Otherwise, the Trump resistance was fired up and ready to pounce—anyplace, anytime. When White House officials ventured out, they risked headline-grabbing clashes. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was famously turned away from the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia. Protesters chanted “Shame!” at then–Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at the Mexican restaurant MXDC a day after she defended family separations at the southern border. And a mom with her toddler urged former EPA chief Scott Pruitt to resign when she encountered him having lunch at Teaism. (He actually did three days later.) Leading up to Trump’s second term, some local service staff hinted at subtler forms of resistance. “This person theoretically has the power to take away your rights, but I have the power to make you wait 20 minutes to get your entrée,” a bartender named Nancy told me last December. Katie Miller—the former DOGE spokesperson and the wife of senior White House adviser Stephen Miller—saw that quote and responded on X: “This is the best part of DC – knowing you have the power to really upset the snowflakes just by showing up to have a meal. See you soon.” Fresh off a decisive electoral victory and in firm control of the Republican party—with a leader who’d been “saved by God” in a failed assassination attempt—the Trump squad arrived in town full of swagger. Butterworth’s, the Capitol Hill restaurant that counts right-wing commentator Raheem Kassam as an investor, has taken the mantle the Trump hotel once held as the de facto MAGA dining HQ, albeit with a far smaller footprint. Other administration bigwigs have congregated within a flourishing scene of private clubs, including the new Executive Branch in Georgetown, cofounded by Donald Trump Jr. Beyond those hot spots, Trump officials and MAGA diehards have been making their way around town in a notably nonchalant way. Maybe it’s resistance burnout, maybe it’s fear, but—aside from Trump’s own excursion to Joe’s—public clashes in restaurants have been largely absent. JD and Usha Vance entertained family and friends at Rasika West End. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been spotted at the trendy new Occidental. FBI director Kash Patel was seen at Oyamel by José Andrés, a vocal Trump critic. And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., probably the most visible of the bunch, has eaten his way across Osteria Mozza, Le Diplomate, Martin’s Tavern, and Cucina Morini. (Okay, at that last one, some patrons reportedly chanted, “Poop!”) “They’re definitely more out and about on the town, is the sense that I get from talking to colleagues,” says the manager of a DC fine-dining restaurant. He’s separately spotted Patel and FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, the latter sporting a form-fitting designer T-shirt and jeans in the upscale dining room. “That casualness is, I think, very distinctive. We haven’t really seen that before in any administration people,” the manager says. “There seems to be an attitude of ‘I don’t give a f— who knows I’m a MAGA, and I’m going to just go out and spend money,’ ” says a different manager of a restaurant group. “And there’s almost a brashness to it. I think before, people were much more discreet about it. [Now] they spend money. They come and they’ll order bottles of Burgundy at lunch and drink martinis, and in some ways it’s good for business.” That manager isn’t the only one seeing Republican money flowing freely. “They spend more money now ’cause they don’t care,” says the owner of a downtown restaurant. “There are a lot of government restrictions on how you can spend money. Lobbyists, foreign lobbyists—there are rules,” he says, referring to federal ethics and disclosure regulations. “There don’t seem to be as many rules right now. Or maybe they’re being interpreted differently or not enforced. I don’t know. There’s more business. There’s definitely more fundraising.” Last year, one upscale DC restaurant had a fundraising buyout for some high-profile House Republicans. The owner, a Democrat, says some staff expressed that they were uncomfortable when they discovered who they were hosting, and he had conversations with his team about remaining hospitable no matter who they were serving. More recently, a Trump cabinet secretary dined at one of his restaurants. The mood now: “We really try not to talk about politics in this space if we can avoid it. It’s just too negative and polarizing.” Meanwhile, the fine-dining manager says diners are trying to chat politics more often and ask their servers if they’re Trump supporters—something staff know how to deflect with polite quips about not talking politics at the dinner table. “I would say every server has had to do that at least once—some of them multiple times over the past year,” he says. “It’s much higher with these Trump years than I’ve experienced in any other administration.” The fine-dining manager says the people they’re able to identify as Trump supporters “tend to flash money a little bit more.” Still, a table throwing down for a pricey bottle of wine doesn’t hit like it used to—because while the MAGA crowd may be living it up, business on the whole is down. “The excitement of, like, ‘Oh, man, that guy bought a $1,000 bottle of wine, that’s so great’ is much less prevalent,” he says. “It’s like, ‘Oh, okay. I only have three tables tonight, so I’m glad he’s here or she’s here, but it would be nice if I had five tables.” “A Staircase Going Down” The Keen boots were the first sign. Julia—not her real name—heard Immigration and Customs Enforcement was in the area, and now a small group was suspiciously hanging outside her suburban restaurant. “We recognized them by the shoes,” she says. “They have these very particular boots.” Julia says she watched the group cross the street and open the covered trunk of an unmarked pickup truck with tinted windows: “It was like RoboCop. This entire pickup became a machine with drawers and drawers of guns and vests and badges.” At her other restaurant in DC, staff had been on edge about ICE ever since Trump’s federalization of local police and the immigration crackdown in August. In fact, some of her staff who are citizens at this suburban location volunteered to swap jobs with those in DC who are not. Now federal agents were in front of the suburban restaurant in the middle of a lunch rush. Before Julia could say or do anything, her staff had already noticed them. “In a minute and ten seconds—because I saw the cameras later—11 of our staff members left. They took off their uniforms. They left kitchens running. They left fires on. They ran,” she says. And then . . . nothing happened. The agents left. It turned out the restaurant was a meeting point before the agents set up a checkpoint elsewhere. They’ve continued to come back for lunch at least once a week. Two of Julia’s employees have quit out of fear. Anxiety, she says, is pervasive—even among workers who are in the country legally. This kind of panic has gripped area restaurants like never before. One chef, a Mexican immigrant with a work permit, says that even though he had legal status, he started taking Ubers to work instead of driving his car, because he’d heard stories about people being tracked and followed by ICE. Seven people in his restaurant group have been detained, and two more have self-deported. Now the chef rarely goes anywhere beyond work and home. “It’s basically like the pandemic,” he says. “We can’t feel free to walk around the street, because we never know.” Meanwhile, Ghostburger owner Josh Phillips says takeout orders plummeted 60 percent after ICE officers began picking delivery drivers up off the streets, and didn’t start rebounding until a month later. The immigration crackdown is just one of many Trump-related business challenges. This year’s DOGE cuts to the federal workforce, the fine-dining manager says, were the first “kick in the shins.” “The lifeblood of lunch and a lot of private events is politics, and now they’re not happening,” he says. “Now it’s ‘Let’s throw your dining base into chaos.’ ” Cork Wine Bar owner Diane Gross says many of her neighbors are federal workers, and she’s seen firsthand how people spend less. “If you’re worried about your next paycheck or if you’re going to lose your job, you may still be going out,” she says. “You’re definitely not splurging on a glass of Champagne.” Even while some federal workers who have lost their jobs have gotten them back amid legal challenges, she adds, “it was this up-and-down that I think businesses hate.” Adding more turbulence? Tariffs. Gross says Trump’s initial threat of a 200-percent tariff on European wine would have been a “death knell.” But even the new 15 percent has been an obstacle, especially with so many watching their wallets. Gross decided to nix one of her customers’ favorite wines, an Italian red called Susumaniello, from the menu when the per-glass price rose above $20. Meanwhile, Cork’s signature dish, avocado toast, uses Mexican avocados and a fancy French olive oil. Both ingredients are more expensive thanks to tariffs. In response, the restaurant has switched to less expensive bread—one of the many compromises happening on menus across the city. And it’s not just the cost of food and wine: Cork is opening a new wine bar in Cleveland Park, and tariffs have driven up the price of lumber, flooring, and other construction materials. Gross can’t even get the temperature-controlled wine refrigerator she wanted. “They’re not bringing it in, because with the tariffs it’s so expensive,” she says. If high prices aren’t enough to turn off customers, there’s also Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops. Restaurant reservations dropped 7 percent from one week to the next as uniformed soldiers began appearing around Union Station, at Metro entrances, and elsewhere, according to OpenTable. International tourism was already projected to be down 5 percent this year, and Destination DC, the city’s tourism-marketing organization, warned that the administration’s negative rhetoric about Washington during the law-enforcement surge could be further damaging. “It felt like the Covid times,” says restaurateur Alan Popovsky, who saw sales at his downtown restaurant Lincoln decline 30 percent in August compared with the previous year. “We had to not only cut staff, we also had to counsel staff because a lot of them were scared because of the ICE component.” All the while, Trump was calling DC a “boom town.” According to the fine-dining manager, that notion was “universally laughed at by every staff member. You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve never seen this ghost town on Thursday night, on Friday night, with gorgeous weather.” The manager adds that even wealthier customers—the kind who still have plenty of disposable income when times are tough—weren’t dining out: “People from McLean and others who are financially well-off individuals who tend to support higher-end restaurants, it was like, ‘Hmmm, we’ll just ask our chef to cook dinner. We don’t need to go into the city.’ ” “Business has just dried up, and it’s not just us. It is widespread—even some of the hot new businesses.” Next came the government shutdown. September and October are usually reliably busy months for restaurants. Not this year. Henceforth, a new brewery, wine bar, and restaurant on H Street, Northeast, saw business decline 40 percent between September and October, with a sudden drop at the start of the shutdown. In response, the restaurant cut back its hours and stopped serving lunch except on Sunday. It closed off sections on slower weekdays. Staff saw their paychecks shrink, with fewer shifts. “Business has just dried up, and from my conversations with other business owners on the street, it’s not just us,” co-owner Mike Spinello said on day 23 of the shutdown. “It is widespread—even some of the hot new businesses.” Reopening the government doesn’t necessarily mean a return to normal. More shutdowns in the near future would not be surprising, and the atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty permeating the region since Trump’s return seems unlikely to dissipate. “Imagine a staircase going down,” says the fine-dining manager. “We have seen just continual, gradual little steps down as each one of these new things happen. We haven’t ever seen a recovery, because then we just walk right into the next situation. And then we have a few months and we get into the next situation.” “The Threat Has Never Felt as Tangible” Throughout the ups and downs of Trump’s first term, you could always count on DC restaurants and bars to make light of the latest headlines with cheeky cocktails. There were $5 “Moscow Muellers” when someone in the President’s orbit was indicted and “Subpoena Coladas” during impeachment hearings. One bar even memorialized January 6 with a series of “Treason All Star” cocktails, including a Marjorie Taylor Greene apple-and-gin drink dubbed “Serious Q: How On Earth Was This Lunatic Elected?” That was then. In DC today, similar headlines feel more like a punch than a punch line. Politics has become less a sport and more a civil war. Earlier this year, the Green Zone, a Middle Eastern bar in Adams Morgan, changed the name of its longstanding “F— Trump! Punch” to “F— This! Punch.” “Things are a lot more serious this time around, and I don’t want my staff getting doxxed or, God forbid, physical harm coming to them,” owner Chris Hassan Francke says. “I’ve been pretty defiant of authorities and all that kind of stuff, but the threat has never felt as tangible as it has since January, February.” Restaurants used to avoid politics because they wanted to welcome everyone. These days, there’s an added reason: They’re afraid of everyone. In an era of With Us or Against Us, seemingly innocuous gestures can invite trouble. Brookland pizzeria Menomale found itself at the center of a political maelstrom and boycott threats after owner Mariya Rusciano—who says she’s a registered Democrat—congratulated Trump on his 2024 election win and, more recently, tweeted that it would be a “privilege” to welcome the President. “I’m sure we’re losing some business because of what we said,” Rusciano says. “But in this case, I feel like the position of civility and the importance of civility is more important.” Meanwhile, protesters with megaphones regularly appear outside Butterworth’s, which has embraced its reputation as a place where the MAGA crowd is welcome. Someone has decorated the surrounding neighborhood with stickers reading fascists eat at Butterworth’s. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the restaurant ramped up security. “It seems pretty clear that people who got their politics from Reddit will pretty happily shoot you over things they don’t understand,” chef and partner Bart Hutchins posted on Instagram at the time. Few restaurants would actually turn away Trump or his top brass, in part because it’s illegal in the District to discriminate based on political affiliation. Still, simply complying with the law—and the longtime Switzerland-like norms of the hospitality industry—can provoke public ire, especially if you post about it. In September, Good Company Doughnuts Cafe experienced a surge of social-media vitriol for posting a photo on Instagram of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt celebrating her 28th birthday with their sweet treats. “Yes, we cater… even to the White House!” the doughnut shop wrote. Good Company owners and siblings Charles Kachadoorian and Kate Murphy say they didn’t even know someone was bringing their doughnuts to the White House until a customer sent them the photo after the fact. They saw it as an accomplishment for their team, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. Nevertheless, public response to their post was so negative that Good Company took it down hours later. Even after that, screenshots continued to circulate, amassing hundreds of comments on Reddit and Instagram. Read one particularly nasty direct message: “I hope your f—ing business goes to bankruptcy you f—ing pedophile supporting c—.” Trying to navigate a no-win situation, Kachadoorian and Murphy say they made a “mistake” posting the photo in the first place. “We don’t want people to feel threatened or unsupported,” Murphy says. “That’s why we took it down. It’s our fault. We take ownership of it. Hopefully, we’re not blaming people for getting upset about it, either. They got upset. We understand.” “Things Probably Aren’t Going to Get Better” Can local dining rebound from its slump? A pessimist might note that, according to the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, the city is on track for a record number of restaurant closures this year. An optimist might counter that restaurant openings are still outpacing closures. But given that it can take years for an establishment to go from concept to opening, the full impact of what’s happening today may not be felt for years to come. The MAGA policies hurting business—such as cracking down on immigration—look less like short-term detours than long-term roadblocks. Vibes-wise, the restaurant scene tends to mirror the city’s mood, and its current doldrums may be hard to shake. Early indicators are ominous. One bar owner says he was in talks with a landlord to sign a lease for a downtown space he’d loved for years. “I’m backing out,” he says. “I don’t feel comfortable opening another bar in DC right now. I don’t know what the city is going to look like a year from now, you know? I don’t trust that [Trump] is not going to unleash more military on our streets and make things more difficult for everybody here.” The owner adds that he’s already struggling to find workers for another project nearing completion: “I have basically one dude coming into work with me now because we can’t find anyone else to come in to do tile work or help with woodworking or labor. No one’s coming to take these jobs that are just vanishing. People are vanishing. They’re just taken off the streets.” Another restaurant owner worries about how all the high-profile MAGA talk of DC being an unsafe city and the images of troops in fatigues might create a lasting image problem for the city, turning off tourists and conventions for years to come. The early Trump years, he says, were good ones for the local restaurant industry, at least until the pandemic. Now, he adds, “the entrepreneurial spirit is not what it was. I have a couple concepts that I would love to do in DC. But for me to go to investors right now or to go to my partners and be like, ‘Hey, we should invest in this,’ it’s really difficult. Because things probably aren’t going to get better for at least three years. And chances are they’re going to get worse.” This article appears in the December 2025 issue of Washingtonian.The post The DC Restaurant Trump Slump first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less