Sliced lemons at room temperature. Expired milk still in the refrigerator. Salted butter left on the counter, and a sink without soap.
This was the scene a health official in New Jersey walked into one morning last month during a routine inspection in the rural township of Bedminster, N.J., her third review of a food establishment that week.
But this was not any ordinary restaurant: It was the Trump National Golf Club, a favored getaway for its owner, President Trump.
For more than three hours, the inspector tallied enough violations — a faulty dishwasher, poorly stocked sinks, improperly stored raw meat — to give the club a score of 32 out of 100, one of the lowest ratings earned by any establishment in Somerset County this year. She ordered immediate fixes.
Many improvements were made, with the club receiving an 86 on a follow-up visit on Wednesday, but not without drawing the anger of Trump National.
“This is clearly nothing more than a politically motivated attack,” the club’s general manager, David Schutzenhofer, said in a statement that bore a certain resemblance to a typical rebuttal by the president and his aides.
“Never before have we witnessed such visceral hostility from the Health Department,” he said, adding, “We operate one of the most immaculate golf facilities in the country, and we take immense pride in our standards of cleanliness, safety and hospitality.”
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, which owns the property, did not respond to questions about what exactly about the inspection suggested it had been politically motivated. On the same day the inspection took place, a different inspector gave a restaurant elsewhere in the county a nearly identical grade, a 33, after uncovering similar violations.
The Somerset County Health Department declined to discuss the inspections. The initial inspection of the club was previously reported by Forbes.
On 520 acres of rolling hills in Bedminster, the property was bought by Mr. Trump in 2002 and opened two years later. It was a preferred retreat for Mr. Trump before his first term, and he often spent his summers there. He still visits on occasion.
Trump National features several dining rooms with views overlooking its 36 holes, and its website boasts that the club uses the finest and freshest ingredients.
On that May visit, the county health inspector, Sumera Khurram, uncovered something different behind its clubby rooms filled with tufted leather chairs. After tallying 18 violations in all, nine of them critical, Ms. Khurram determined that the chef in charge during her review had failed to “demonstrate knowledge of food safety.”
Ms. Khurram also conducted the follow-up review on Wednesday, but there was a different person in charge of the club kitchen — Trump National’s executive chef. Most of the initial concerns had been addressed.
But she recorded new violations, too. Two were considered critical, including coffee creamer that had registered 50 degrees instead of the required 41 degrees. It was poured out.
Matthew Haag writes for The Times about the intersection of real estate and politics in the New York region. He has been a journalist for two decades.
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