This week, The Gateway Pundit landed an exclusive interview with Butterworth’s chef-partner, Bart Hutchins, who took us inside his posh, yet unpretentious, bistro and bar, attracting White House staff, Congressional staff, and familiar MAGA faces, on a near-nightly basis.
Two blocks from the Capitol building in Washington, DC, the supremely stylish American bistro, Butterworth’s, plays host to some of the heaviest power players in conservative politics – and the hot, new Capitol Hill hangout only opened for business in October 2024.
“I’ve always wanted this property; this building. I’ve been in this neighborhood most of my career, and I love this neighborhood. I would always come down here and look in the window,” Bart Hutchins told The Gateway Pundit.
“I know my meat guy; I know the lady that owns the kitchenware store; I know the people that own the bookshop. I like knowing everybody that I buy things from. I like walking down the street and waving to people in the morning.”
“I love Capitol Hill. It got really hit by COVID. Capitol Hill turned into a wasteland.”
“When I got the chance to come do this restaurant, on Capitol Hill, specifically, I said, ‘Let’s do it, and let’s do a really good job of it. Let’s give this place something to be proud of.’”
“The people running the Free World are right here, and they should be eating well. That’s part of our mission,” Hutchins said.
Hutchins had long since established himself as a local legend among DC’s restauranting elite, but before Hutchins opened Butterworth’s, his business partners had to lure him away from a rural Minnesota farm, where Hutchins spent his days writing, in seclusion.
“My business partner, Julian, started this project. He called me and said, ‘That place you always wanted – we got it. Come do it.’”
“And at first, I said, ‘No. I’m not doing another restaurant.’”
“The money is hard to come by. Food prices are insane. Labor prices are crazy. It’s a really hard business.”
“But, at the end of the day, I couldn’t say no,” Hutchins said.
Butterworth’s, which is ranked among the top ten new DC restaurants by the Washington Post, is co-owned by former senior advisor to Nigel Farage, former editor-in-chief of Breitbart, and co-founder of popular conservative media outlets, War Room and The National Pulse, Raheem Kassam.
Butterworth’s namesake hails from Alex Butterworth, the senior legal counsel at Uber, who is a top investor in the Capitol Hill restaurant.
In April, 2025, this Gateway Pundit correspondent first dined at Butterworth’s, on a dinner reservation with a sophisticated, longtime Republican operative from the Reagan Administration.
We ordered a good bottle of champagne, some caviar, a Caesar salad, a blue crab bucatini, a golden vegetable risotto, and a flat iron steak.
The bottle of dry champagne was a treat, and we could not stop drinking it.
The meal was exceptionally flavorful and well-balanced. Every dish we ordered took on the rare quality of melting in our mouths. Slathered in top-shelf butter and oils, all the foods boasted a smooth, balanced texture.
Butterworth’s menu items stood out as being quite reasonably priced, especially considering that the “cost of admission” likely grants customers the opportunity to dine alongside famed MAGA figures.
As a bonus, the Butterworth’s staff came across as extremely friendly and well-intentioned.
When I returned to Butterworth’s the following week to have lunch, I realized that Butterworth’s had actually become renowned for its draft pints of Guinness, and its french fries.
Once I ordered my first pint of Guinness, I learned that the black lager kegs had all been dried out by the weekend’s customers. Days later at Butterworth’s, however, I was fortunate enough to enjoy the smoothest pint of Guinness in my life.
As it relates to Butterworth’s foods, their beef tallow french fries have become the talk of the town, by no sheer accident.
Impressively, Hutchins and his partners remain hell-bent on sourcing all ingredients from vendors and farms that supply only the freshest foods. Furthermore, Hutchins sincerely seeks to benefit his customers’ health.
“We do the fries right. We buy Kennebec potatoes from the Amish Farmers of Pennsylvania. We cut them, and we blanche them in vinegar water. Then we blanche them in beef tallow. Then we fry them again in beef tallow, so you get this extra crunchy, perfectly golden fry. It’s the small things, where you can really make a difference for yourself,” Hutchins said.
“It’s like, are you going to take the time to do that? Are you going to buy the frozen fries, dip them in the fryer, and sell them to as many people as you can? Or, are you going to be a craftsman? Are you going to support the farmers who grow these potatoes, and then take those crops, and treat them well?”
“I call the farmers, and I say, ‘What’s coming out of the ground, right now? What’s fresh? What’s in season? Which vegetables and meats do you have?’”
“I ask them to ship it, and then we come up with a dish, from there. I don’t make a dish up in my head, and then go shopping for ingredients,” Hutchins said.
Hutchins and his partners regularly update their menus, depending on the seasonality of ingredients. Hutchins’s uncompromising practices regarding well-sourced foods have led Hutchins to the forefront on a hot button political issue.
“One of the phenomena in my career is that I wasn’t a particularly political person when I became a chef. I am looking to attract anyone and everyone. I do have strong, political opinions about how we should eat,” Hutchins said.
“This is about a holistic system of eating. Let’s move away from these big, industrialized foods. Let’s move away from these things that are making us sick. Let’s move a little bit closer to the land, and let’s support the people who grow things the right way.”
“There are people who want to make money off us being sick, and they make food that is filled with chemicals. It’s disgusting, and it should be illegal.”
“Because it’s not illegal, your choice is to give your money to people who hate you, or you can support people who do things the right way,” Hutchins said.
Hutchins now finds himself within the nerve center of US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy, Jr’s, health revolution, promoting only the most natural, American foods.
“To have the right wing join in; to have the MAHA crowd join in, is super exciting for me, because for a long time, I have said, ‘This is the way we should eat. This is the way we should live.’”
“MAHA has brought in a sort of young, right-wing crowd to that style of eating, and I am excited about it, because we should all be eating that way.”
“There is a way to eat that is right, good, and better for us. And there is a way to eat that is poisonous, and killing us. I think everybody – chefs, home cooks, and parents – should really be looking at our food in that way. Start with what’s coming out of the ground,” Hutchins said.
For lunch at Butterworth’s, I was served – on a silver platter – extra crispy beef tallow french fries, with garlic and chive oil aioli.
Then, I savored my order of lavishly soft scrambled eggs, topped with crème fraiche and chives, on a robust slice of sourdough.
Finally, I washed down my lunch with a steaming pot of French Press coffee from the Butterworth’s partners’ own proprietary coffee line.
I lounged on a couch inside the conservative movement’s top new social hangout that now serves a growing number of Democratic congressmen and Capitol Hill staffers, as well.
Evidently, in Bart Hutchins’s view, his elegant and charming Butterworth’s offers a refuge from the harsher realities of Washington, DC.
“The capital city should be an example of what we want the country to look like and feel like. Right now it looks sort of forgotten, and run down, and left to rot. I think beautifying the entire country starts with beautifying DC. Our streets should be cleaned regularly. Our streets should be beautiful. There should be green grass everywhere. There should be trees everywhere,” Hutchins said.
“Our [Butterworth’s] interior is a maximalist interior. We love our old books that are on the shelf; we love our old chandeliers; we love that we bought all of our plates secondhand through estate sales and thrift stores. They are all made out of real china.”
“For the design, I think we are looking at old London lunch clubs. We are really looking to the old world for design inspiration.”
“There is a lot in the works. We are going to finish the basement. So, we will go from two floors, to three floors, here at Butterworth’s,” Hutchins said.
Butterworth’s future appears every bit as bright as the MAGA and MAHA movements themselves.
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