Netflix’s Black Rabbit offers viewers a unique perspective on New York City’s restaurant scene. The crime drama, which premiered on the streaming giant on Sept. 18, follows Jude Law and Jason Bateman as Jake and Vince, two musician-turned-restaurateur brothers who couldn’t be more opposite. One of them is desperately trying to run the titular establishment as it establishes itself, and the other, a reckless gambler, is on the hook for over $100,000.
As chaos ensues, kicking off with Vince’s return to the Big Apple amid several loan sharks tailing him, Black Rabbit’s married co-creators, Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, create a world inspired by the history of real-life New York City restaurants.
Production designer Alex DiGerlando found inspiration in old New York (plus rock and roll)
According to Marie Claire, Black Rabbit was filmed entirely in New York City, either on location or at Steiner Studios’ soundstage in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Exterior shots were taken at 279 Water Street in the South Street Seaport area, one of the last remaining wood-frame buildings in Lower Manhattan.
Production designer Alex DiGerlando told Netflix’s Tudum that, while building the Black Rabbit’s interior set, they took inspiration for elements in the original 279 Water Street building.
“We lifted a lot of details directly from that architecture — things like the carved wood banister, the exposed lath, the peeling wallpaper, the chipping brick and concrete,” DiGerlando shared. “All those things are in that original location. We just pulled our favorite moments into the design.”
DiGerlando added that they also found inspiration in former New York City eateries like “Chumley’s, One if By Land, Two if By Sea, Fraunces Tavern, Freemans Restaurant, and other places like those.”
Leaning on the show’s rock and roll flavoring, DiGerlando and his team turned to rockers’ homes to help bring the Black Rabbit to life.
“Because of the rock’n’roll origin story of the Rabbit, we talked about looking at classic rockers’ homes — for example, Jimmy Page and Keith Richards live in these amazing English estates,” he told Tudum. “So we were looking at those and thinking about taverns in the English countryside — the kind you could imagine stumbling into after a long day of traveling — and [we] started pulling all these references.”
Some other famous New York City locations featured in Black Rabbit include the East Village’s 10th St Russian and Turkish baths, the Coney Island boardwalk and the Pool Room in the Four Seasons.
Is the Black Rabbit an actual restaurant?
Although much of Black Rabbit is inspired by real New York City establishments and history, the titular restaurant is fictional, drawing inspiration from several popular New York City eateries. Baylin and Susman cited the Spotted Pig, a gastropub that shut down in 2020 amid allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct, as their biggest inspiration. The couple lived near the establishment in the 2000s.
They also noted other former New York City restaurants, such as Prune, Beatrice Inn, Babbo and the Dressler, as inspiration for Black Rabbit.
“We were completely intoxicated and obsessed with what was going on with these restaurants,” Susman told Esquire. “At a number of these places, like the Spotted Pig or Dressler, stories came out later that there was so much going on there that we weren’t aware of. There were these really dark underbellies. Zach and I had worked in restaurants for a long time in high school and college. So we understood the difference between what you see and what happens when the lights turn off.”
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