What Restaurant Are They Talking About On The RHONY Season Premiere? Twitter Has A Few Guesses
Contains spoilers for "The Real Housewives of New York City" Season 14, Episode 1 — "New Era, New York"
Never let it be said that the "Real Housewives" franchise has ever shied away from controversy, but even for these perpetually-dishing divas, some subjects are too ticklish to discuss. To wit, during the Season 14 premiere of "The Real Housewives of New York City," Brynn Whitfield and Sai De Silva are accused by fellow cast member Erin Dana Lichy of leaving her dinner party early due to their distaste for the restaurant she selected. Whitfield and De Silva are later caught after posting pictures to their social media of them eating at another, more exclusive restaurant on the same night as Lichy's gathering. The name of the establishment was bleeped out during the broadcast. Repeatedly. What wasn't bleeped out were the housewives' general complaints about how overrated the place is, and how expensive it is for mediocre food.
"Real Housewives" fans, naturally, love their drama, and the repeated bleeps got fans on Twitter gossiping as to what was being cut out and why. Many viewers believe that the restaurant is Catch, a seafood establishment with multiple American locations including New York City, due to context clues laced throughout the outing.
Another camp of devotees declared that they think the name the girls keep blurting out is Craft — as in Tom Colicchio's restaurant. Twitter user @AsthmaPumpPuffa created a thread that makes a well-thought-out pitch for Craft being the restaurant and a strong case for the network to censor the name. To sum things up: the last thing Bravo wants is cross-program drama that could cause the "Top Chef" judge upset.
Craft or Catch -- either way it's quite the controversy
A bunch of other names were flouted as possibilities conversational culprits. The restaurant getting mocked for being out of fashion pinged the ears of some watchers. Vulture noted the place might be Tao, which appeared to be Twitter's third most popular guess. The locale — once hip in the '00s thanks to an appearance on "Sex and the City" — has become more of a tourist destination in recent years. But the length of the name spoken doesn't seem to match up with the short, vowel-heavy restaurant's name.
Jessel Taank, a fellow "Real Housewives of New York City" cast member, waded into the fray of Brynn Whitfield's Instagram comments on July 17, where Whitfield jokingly posted a reply to the controversy, with a pithy, "Make sure C**** is on that." That indicates the verboten establishment's name starts with a C and is a single five-letter word, which in turn eliminates a lot of the other possibilities, like Butter, Hearth, Carbone, or Carmine's.
Whether the establishment is Catch or Craft one question lingers — why would Bravo bleep the name of the establishment mentioned? Perhaps they were afraid of viewers review-bombing the named restaurant on Google and Yelp. As @CheaterBrand noted on Twitter, the Bravo fan community is mighty, and willing to back up even this new flock of housewives. We'll see if their loyalty lingers through further controversies.