Usually I love dining alone in restaurants. But it felt wrong to be eating solo at the Golden Girls Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant in Manhattan devoted to the classic sitcom that celebrated friendship above everything. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this; the longtime pal and confidante I had planned to meet canceled on me, citing one of the illnesses that seems to be felling just about everyone this season. Would-be replacements offered excuses that sounded like a parade of zeitgeist-y maladies: a Zoom meeting; a sick kid; so sorry, I’m traveling the week after and I’m avoiding restaurants until then …
So I found myself at a table for one on a drizzly gray afternoon overlooking the cobblestone streets of the Seaport neighborhood, feeling in my beige turtleneck sweater and jeans about a million miles away from the scene around me: a campy, sunshine-lit shrine to the Emmy-winning show about four older women sharing a home in Miami, which ran from 1985 to 1992, and the shoulder-padded, helmet-haired women who made it a hit.
I was seated just around the corner from one of the highlights of the two-story space: a faithful re-creation of the well-trafficked boudoir of Blanche Devereaux, the show’s resident sex-positive Southern belle. A stream of diners posed on the bed, which was draped in that iconic banana-leaf-printed comforter and set against a background of matching wallpaper. The details were convincing, including the mauve carpet underfoot and the fuchsia evening gown tossed over a rattan screen, giving the impression that the room’s fictional inhabitant had just strolled out to grab a slice of cheesecake from the refrigerator.
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As Sister Sledge sang about fam-i-lee, I ordered “The Dorothy,” a cocktail named after the sarcastic, levelheaded girl of the bunch (I am, I had decided, a Dorothy), and decided to make the best of my singleton status. The $19 blend of Grey Goose, prosecco, Campari and seltzer proved to be a watery but festive drink that arrived garnished with a Golden Girls Kitchen cocktail umbrella.
The pop-up restaurant is fresh off a sold-out run in Los Angeles. After a 12-week stint in New York, it will go to Miami, Chicago and San Francisco this spring. Visitors can linger in a re-creation of the show’s kitchen, with its duck-shaped ceramic cookie jar and red tea kettle. They can pony up to the Rusty Anchor bar, the girls’ favorite hangout, or sit in the fern-ringed lanai. More than a restaurant or mere photo backdrop, the pop-up is an experience meant to transport visitors into the comforting world of the show.
“It’s been emotional for some people,” said Andy Lederman, the founder and CEO of Bucket Listers, the company behind the pop-up. “It’s a way to experience their favorite show, so they feel like they’re a part of it.”
Lederman said it was crucial that they nail the details, down to the tchotchkes lining the kitchen countertops, which were created by set designers. Groups of superfans have come dressed as the cast. They pose making calls on the kitchen’s yellow wall-mounted phone and splay seductively on Blanche’s bed.
Other shows have had similar treatments. “The Friends Experience,” a re-creation of the apartment and coffee shop featured in the long-running sitcom, came to various cities this year, and Hulu in 2015 created a traveling “Seinfeld” apartment pop-up to promote its acquisition of the show’s streaming rights. And “Sex and the City” bus tours still ferry fans around New York for glimpses of the locations where the show’s characters dated and brunched.
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But more than any of those, “The Golden Girls,” with its specific aesthetic, a retro blend of feminine and Floridian — all ruffled curtains and rattan armchairs — lends itself to a theme-park-style re-creation. Sarah Royal, who co-hosts the podcast “Enough Wicker,” which is devoted to analyzing the show, says fans are drawn to these spaces not just because they feel so familiar, but also because they want to imagine themselves inhabiting them, just like the characters.
Share this articleShare“The kitchen is this intimate space where the women would come together to talk about everything: love and sex, whether to go on a date, addiction, how to deal with their children,” Royal says. “We all want that bosom buddy. We all want to be able to wander into the kitchen at 2 a.m. and eat a cheesecake and have those conversations.”
Though it ended three decades ago, “Golden Girls” is having a moment in the sun: Thousands of people gathered this year in Chicago for Golden Con, a convention of panels, trivia games, autograph signings and performances of the show’s iconic theme song. There are podcasts, memes and TikTok remixes. Merch abounds online. You can find tumblers and candles that read “Live like Rose, Dress like Blanche, Think like Dorothy, Speak like Sophia,” throw blankets featuring the faces of the main characters in Warhol-style portraits, an official “Golden Girls Cookbook” and an edition of Trivial Pursuit devoted to the show.
The show’s popularity with younger viewers might have to do with the current surge in ’90s nostalgia, along with the fact that it has aged far better than other relics of its era. It has long been popular with gay viewers who see themselves and their communities in its theme of a chosen family; the pop-up restaurant will begin offering a drag brunch.
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Royal, who has tickets for the pop-up in February, says it appeals to a swath of viewers because of its universal message: Reinvention is always possible. “The Golden Girls” centered on the second act for its heroines, who were either divorced or widowed, with grown children. “This was the Reagan era, when the greater culture is saying: ‘You are done. There’s nothing left in life for you,’” she said. “But these four women came together and discovered a new side to themselves, both individually and as a unit. You don’t have to be a 60-year-old in Miami to relate to the feeling that there’s nothing left for you or that there’s no access to change.”
As I watched the scene around me at the restaurant, that sentiment felt right. The show’s feel-good vibes were manifest. Clusters of girlfriends sipped “Devereaux’s Delight” cocktails. One wore a sequined top, another a wide-brimmed pink hat and a “Stay Golden” T-shirt. They posed under a neon sign spelling out the title of the show’s theme song, “Thank You for Being a Friend.”
I nibbled on my decadently cheesy and meaty “Sophia’s Lasagna al Forno” (a $40 ticket gets you an entree and a slice of cheesecake), and ignored the under-toasted, over-buttered garlic bread that came with it. The food here isn’t the point; no one goes to a sitcom-themed restaurant for fine dining, though the menu does offer a chance for more “Golden Girls” references, some broad (the “Lanai” Cuban sandwich) and some deep cuts (the side of “Edgar Allan Poe-tato French Fries” was a callback to an episode that found Dorothy visiting a restaurant with a literary theme).
Without a friend to enjoy it with, I wasn’t giving myself over totally to the experience. I was distracted by the branding — a Hallmark Channel logo over a kitschy wall mural of cheesecake — and by the extensive merchandise kiosk, where I briefly considered buying a $40 windshield visor featuring images of the four women behind the wheel. My cheesecake arrived; it was sweet and creamy, but the center was a little cold, which felt like a metaphor for my experience. But then again, maybe I was just being too much of a Dorothy.
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