Anthony Bourdain’s lovely, intimidating, flirt-with-him-via-Twitter-and-you’ll-be-sorry wife Ottavia is taking a spin in the producer’s chair. She executive produced a pilot for a new series called Employees Only, which she created with writer/director Tania Van Pelt documenting their lives when they first moved to the Big Apple. The two call working in the hospitality industry “a rite of passage” when you first move to New York, and so they decided to make a TV show about what working in a restaurant was really like. Because all those “exposes” they were reading at the time about how crazy the culinary industry was? Apparently those were nothing in comparison to what life working in the front of the house was like.
(Side note: Do Anthony and Ottavia just sit at home debating whose early life in the city was harder? “I’m a way bigger badass because of my cocaine addiction.”/”Uh, sweetheart? Waiting tables. BOOM.”)
The series takes place in fictional Flatiron District resto Zio (and shoots in non-fictional Flatiron District resto Zio), where the waiters are juggling all the dramedy of a trendy spot’s soft-opening. Is this series starting to sound familiar? Yeah, that’s because it’s exactly like Ottavia’s hubby’s scripted series Kitchen Confidential, except told from the waiters’ point of view. It’s Hostess Stand Confidential. The trailer for the pilot episode of Employees Only was pulled off the interwebs almost as soon as it was discovered, but this interview with Ottavia and Tania survives.
What do you think? Will you watch?
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