A local government inspection found the restaurant at one of Donald Trump’s golf clubs is positively crawling with health code violations.
Loudoun County health officials last month toured the kitchens at Trump National Golf Club Washington, D.C., in Potomac Falls, Virginia, west of the capital.
There are a number of truly disturbing problems with the place, according to the officials’ write-up of their visit, first reported on Monday by NOTUS. The most glaring was “a large quantity of small flies” found in a storage room itself located, for reasons unclear, “near the employee restrooms.”
Inspectors also shamed the club’s grill for storing food at temperatures above county health code requirements. The blue cheese, sausage patties, sausage links, and pasta, all kept at between 8 and 13 degrees above the recommended temperature, were of particular concern.
“The person-in-charge voluntarily discarded the blue cheese and sausage,” county records show. There is no note of what remedial action may have been taken over the pasta, which “was prepared several days ago.”
The outdoor pizza preparation area apparently lacks “a handwashing sink in convenient proximity to food employees,” meaning staff have to walk back “to the clubhouse to wash their hands.” Inspectors also found pest control strips “hanging above the food preparation table” there, and a can of insect killer with a label that “does not state that use is allowed in a food establishment.”
County authorities also brought up food staff for storing raw steak, burgers, and fish alongside tortillas, sauces, and other ready-to-eat foods. A chemical sanitizer solution stored beside the snack bar sink further appears to have significantly exceeded the maximum allowed strength.
NOTUS writes that it is only the latest raft of health code violations to have dogged properties in the 80-year-old president’s portfolio over the past year. Inspectors wrote up Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley in Hopewell Junction, New York, earlier in June for a “critical violation” over “spoiled, adulterated” food at its restaurant that risked making customers sick.
Health officials who visited Trump National Golf Club in Westchester, about 40 miles south of Hopewell Junction, last November also found insects and rodents crawling about the place, along with “dirty surfaces’ and facilities in “disrepair.”
A spokesperson for Trump National Golf Club Washington D.C. told NOTUS on Monday that the property operates its properties “to the highest health and safety standards,” and that “these so-called ‘violations’ are fabricated, politically motivated, and completely without merit.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the club, the Trump Organization and the White House for comment on this story.
