With his first address to Congress looming, Donald Trump opted to spend his weekend in Washington for a change. It was the first weekend in February that the president had not boarded Air Force One and headed south to Mar-a-Lago, the “Winter White House,” which he recently began referring to as the “Southern White House,” perhaps to account for the trips he will continue to take to his private Palm Beach resort once spring has sprung in D.C.

Remaining sequestered in the actual White House did wonders for Trump, who enjoyed a relatively quiet weekend without the distractions of a working vacation. For the first time in weeks, there were no photos of him playing golf, or crashing a wedding, or dealing with North Korean missile crises at the dinner table, as paying Mar-a-Lago members looked eagerly on. Instead, he worked on his speech, during which he is expected to finally lay out additional details about his plans to repeal and replace Obamacare. On Sunday evening, he hosted the nation’s governors at the annual Governors’ Dinner at the White House, which meant he was otherwise occupied throughout the Oscars ceremony, during which the president’s Twitter feed remained mercifully dormant.

Trump did take a break, however, to eat dinner in a more welcoming environment: the steakhouse within his own Washington, D.C. hotel, which bears his name and is located, conveniently, just five blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. Temporarily freed from the isolation and burden of the West Wing, the president was met with a rousing round of applause on Saturday night as he entered the premises, where he was reportedly greeted by photos and offering up praise.

Trump’s ego wasn’t the only thing that got a much-needed boost. His frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago have served as a marketing blitz for his resort, which doubled its membership fee earlier this year, shortly before being rebranded the “Winter White House.” Like his Palm Beach resort, Trump’s D.C. hotel was already enjoying a bump thanks to its owner’s electoral victory and his frequent presence. Its recent popularity allowed the hotel to raise its drink prices; rooms, which had initially been discounted soon after the hotel opened in the fall, were back to charging full rates. When I visited the hotel two nights before the election, I was one of the few people staying in the nearly 300-room hotel; during inauguration weekend, by comparison, the hotel was at capacity.

But the prospect of President Trump showing up for a meal unquestionably boosts the hotel even further. If you’re a Trump supporter, or anyone interested in observing a sitting president dousing a well-done steak in ketchup, or watching the Secret Service in action, and you know there’s a greater likelihood that he will show up at the hotel than anywhere else, well, then that’s where you’re going to hedge your bets and book your next D.C. meal.

This fact can’t be lost on Trump, who has spent decades branding his name, slapping the letters T-R-U-M-P across buildings, casinos, ties, water, and even a now defunct real-estate “university.” The man and the company are inseparable, even if he has stepped away from the day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization. Critics call the president’s financial entanglements with a far-flung, multi-billion dollar real-estate and licensing business a legal and ethical nightmare; Trump counters that his supporters knew what they were voting for and didn’t care.

Trump isn’t the only person in his administration who has come under fire for using their position as a marketing ploy. Earlier this month, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway gave Ivanka Trump’s brand a “free commercial” and urged viewers to buy her eponymous line after Nordstrom publicly opted to drop it from its stores. The unsolicited advertisement led to an inquiry from both the Congressional Oversight Committee and Office of Government Ethics, which noted that a federal employee can’t use their position to advertise for something, as Conway had done.

The president, as he has repeatedly pointed out, is exempt from any such ethical rules or conflict-of-interest laws. But there is no doubt he would be violating them, if he were any other government employee. Until the law catches up to the brave new world that Trump is forging each day, he can continue to eat his well-done steak in public, raking in money for his properties, and be president, too.