Meat-gorging 'MAGA people' unwelcome in 'extremely liberal' DC's hottest restaurants
New York Magazine's Adam Platt says that while "MAGA people are not welcome in a lot of places" in still-liberal Washington D.C., there has emerged a far-right dining scene to which "creatures of the new Trump revolution" are flocking.
At Butterworth's, the so-called Elaine's of the MAGA movement, according to co-owner Raheem Kassan, referring to the 1970s Manhattan canteen of the chic elite, podcaster and former Trump White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon maintains a "regular corner table," Platt says. Far-right influencer Jack Posobeic is also a regular.
Kassan, incidentally, also happens to be the editor-in-chief of a right-wing website called the National Pulse, Platt says, and though President Donald Trump has yet to come in, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has.
"“I think MAGA One’s attitude was ‘Let’s go in there, let’s smash things up a bit, let’s leave the globalist apparatus a little worse than we found it," but this current version of MAGA, or MAGA Two, as he says, is different.
"This new MAGA scene is younger, he said. People want to create lasting change; they want houses and careers," Platt explains.
Butterworth's isn't the only MAGA hot spot, Platt says, noting that Donald Trump Jr.’s 200-members-only private club, Executive Branch, "costs a cool half-million dollars to join . . . featuring, among many other things, a tech-bro-heavy members list (crypto czar David Sacks, the Winklevoss twins) and a state-of-the-art sushi bar."
Immediately following Trump's second stint in DC, restaurants started to close as the president's crackdown on alleged crime and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents took over the streets saw locals losing their appetites to dine out. But not MAGA. Only, there was a slight problem.
“Washington is still extremely liberal, which means MAGA people are not welcome in a lot of places, which means they tend to gather in groups in venues where they know they’re not going to be harassed,” said Jessica Sidman, who covers restaurants forWashingtonian magazine.
Sidman accurately called popular chain steakhouse The Capital Grille "the swampiest restaurant in Washington, a red-meat, red hat hot spot where, Sidman says, "Republican fat cats still outspend Democrats here by a ratio of 13 to one."
DC lobbyist Mark R. Smith, a Capital Grille regular, weighed in on MAGA eating habits, saying, “My Democratic friends have a distinctly different and more global palate than my steak-loving Republican friends."
Smith, a Trump supporter, did say that younger MAGA are refining their own palates to consume copious, carnivorous amounts of roasted marrow bones in addition to red meat.
"“There are those of us who have been with the president from 2015 forward,” Smith said. “We’re still here and crushing it, and now there are a new generation of younger kids who are learning and doing some very good things. They have to eat too.”
And while most MAGA hangouts are just that, MAGA hangouts, there's one that's bringing both sides of the aisle together, albeit at a hefty price.
At Ned's Club, a standard membership in D.C. costs a $5,000 one time fee to join with $5,000 dues annually, but an invite-only Founding Global Membership costs $125,000 to join and $25,000 each year.
While the Treasury Secretary Bessent has the founding membership, CNN's Kaitlan Collins is a regular member, as is former junk bond king Michael Milken.
But it's Butterworth's that seems to be command central for MAGA. And while co-owner Kassan told Platt that "he’s much less of 'frothing-at-the-mouth right-wing hot head' than he used to be, those flocking to his restaurant are frothing in their own right.
“The tables are heaving. I don’t see many familiar faces. The place is actually a success. It’s time to sell!" he said.
