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Eater
7 hours ago
- Eater
Tracking the NYC Restaurants in ‘And Just Like That...' Season 3, Episode 2
And just like that, HBO Max's Sex and the City sequel series returns for its third season. And Just Like That... brings back our long-time New Yorkers Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis), as well as relative newcomers Seema (Sarita Choudhury) and Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker), to our televisions and laptops. What is summer without our gals talking candidly about sex, making bad puns, and dining and drinking around the city? Like previous seasons, Eater will be tracking where the gang is eating across New York City, from brunch sessions to romantic dinners to cocktail dates. This guide will be updated weekly when each episode airs on Thursdays at 9 p.m., leading up to the finale. And we're saying it now: there will be spoilers ahead. Episode 2, 'Outlook Good' Welcome to New Rat City, Carrie Bradshaw. Her idyllic Gramercy Park townhouse garden is overrun by the truest of New Yorkers — rats! Miranda discovers the joys of bad reality dating shows, and Seema's dealing with a parade of bad dates. Anthony is fulfilling his dream of opening a physical Hot Fellas bakery, or as he too obviously calls it, a 'dick-and-mortar.' It looks cute, with a counter, baked goods on display, tiled walls, lots of blues, and bread-shaped scones and door handles. (The production team didn't use an existing bakery for the filming — rather, they took over an empty storefront on the corner of East 88th Street and Madison Avenue.) Jac's on Bond 26 Bond Street, near Lafayette Street, Noho The episode begins with Carrie meeting with her former neighbor Lisette, who bought her longtime Upper East Side apartment at the cocktail bar. Lisette preemptively orders them both gimlets. 'I made a bold choice,' she explains. Lisette gifts Carrie a necklace with her old key and street address while they chat about dating in the city. Rosa Mexicano 61 Columbus Avenue at West 62nd Street, Lincoln Square The Upper West Side location of the Mexican mini-chain is a major set piece for this episode. In the first scene, Carrie, Miranda, and Seema are seated in the main dining room with chips and salsa for the group. A server comes over to make them tableside guacamole; she chimes in during Miranda's discussion of dating reality show Bi Island, and Miranda falls in love. Later on, Carrie and Miranda are back at the restaurant — Carrie is Miranda's 'guacamole beard' while Miranda flirts with the same staffer. 'I predict a very bright future for you,' Carrie says, 'Your combined good cholesterol will be through the roof.' They're seated next to the stunning blue-tiled waterfall wall. They order the guacamole again made by the same server, but alas, it turns out she's not interested in dating Miranda. Carrie also sends a voice text to Aidan while standing in the restaurant's beautiful bathroom. (Rosa Mexicana is planning on shuttering this Lincoln Square location to reopen nearby inside the Empire Hotel on West 63rd Street at some point this year. Le B 283 West 12th Street at West Fourth Street, Greenwich Village Seema goes on a series of bad dates at the luxe restaurant, where she and the lackluster men sit at the best seats at the bar — the corner. She disses one date who she assumes will ask to split the check by summing up the experience: 'Drinks: 30 dollars; telling you to go shove it: priceless.' Amazing. Tatiana 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, at West 65th Street and Ninth Avenue, Lincoln Square Seema goes on what she assumes is a date set up by her coworker at the upscale Afro-Caribbean restaurant. But it turns out to be a matchmaker meeting with Sydney, played by the delightful Cheri Oteri. (Maybe matchmaking in New York City is in the air: director Celine Song's new movie Materialists , which comes out on Friday, June 13, centers on a matchmaker in Manhattan.) Sydney showcases how good she is at reading people by ordering for Seema: 'salmon tartare, wasabi vinaigrette on the side, extra avocado, and hold the scallions.' Seema agrees it's the right choice. For herself, she gets the crispy artichoke and a martini (none of these are served at Tatiana actually). Bottino 246 Tenth Avenue, near West 24th Street, Chelsea For Seema's attempt to act like an appealing woman for the sake of a man, she goes on a date in the pretty garden patio of the Italian restaurant. They're eating pasta and drinking red wine; later, the guy orders two tiramisus, but Seema has had enough. 'I hated the cabernet you chose, and the tiramisu is tired,' she says, admitting that this isn't who she really is. He claims to still be into the date, but then ditches her, leaving Sydney to pop up out of nowhere to finish the dessert. And just like that (sorry, sorry), we're ready for next week's episode. Episode 1, 'Outlook Good' Goodbye, Carrie's brownstone that's actually in the West Village but masquerades as the Upper East Side; hello, new Gramercy Park townhouse. Last season, Carrie sold her iconic studio to buy and move into a large building along the park for herself and her cute kitty Shoe. Carrie and Aidan are in an ambiguous not-being-together-for-now situation as he lives in Virginia. Miranda's now back in New York and single. Motel No Tell 210 Avenue A, at East 13th Street, East Village Of course, a queer bar decked out with neon and a disco ball would be blasting Chappell Roan's 'Hot to Go!' This East Village bar is standing in for a 'lady bar,' as Miranda describes to Carrie and Charlotte, thanking them for accompanying her on a night out of trying to score a date. Now, she's a non-alcoholic drinker, but laments her $37 mocktail tabs, and later orders a Phony Negroni. A couple of scenes later, we're back at the bar: it's closing time and Miranda is alone. But she meets Mary (played by Rosie O'Donnell), a Canadian visiting the city. They end up going to her hotel room together. (In real life, Motel No Tell is celebrating its television appearance by offering a cocktail special for the summer: the Lady Pond is made with vodka, orange, vermouth, cranberry, lime, and apple shrub, for $16.) Tavern on the Green West 67th Street and Central Park West, Upper West Side Okay, the iconic Central Park restaurant isn't actually seen on the show, but it's the butt of a joke. Miranda recaps her hookup to Carrie, explaining that she turned out to be a nun who really wanted to take her to Tavern on the Green, saying 'she doesn't know, it's her first trip to New York.' Carrie is aghast: 'I don't know which is worse: that you slept with a nun or a tourist.' Jean-Georges 1 Central Park West, between Columbus Circle and West 61st Street, Lincoln Square Another talked-about but never-seen restaurant. Seema's Marvel director boyfriend Ravis is back from filming in Egypt and tells her he booked lunch at the French tasting menu restaurant. But before that, his film crew has to scout locations in Red Hook, which makes him late for their 1 p.m. reservation. He pushes it back to dinner, and the group eats cooler sandwiches on the pier. But of course, they miss their dinner, and Seema breaks it off. 'I don't do vans or Cool Ranch potato chips, but I did try,' she says. Red Rooster 310 Lenox Avenue, at West 126th Street, Harlem Lisa is tasked with throwing a last-minute cocktail reception for her husband Herbert to make him look cool for his political campaign running for city comptroller. So what's cooler than the celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson's comfort food flagship? The dining room is full — Lisa tells the girls that they should 'eat everything' and that 'the fritters are no joke.' The tables are laden with fried chicken and sandwiches, and the event ends with Carrie and Miranda eating some sort of pudding-like dessert out of little mugs. Sign up for our newsletter.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
'And Just Like That…' Season 3 dabbles in dating app fatigue
"I spend every waking hour scrolling, swiping, texting, and it's all just hurtful or meaningless." In one brief venting moment, over a couple of Gimlets in a crowded Manhattan bar, And Just Like That… Season 3 takes aim at dating in 2025. In episode 2, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her former neighbour Lisette (Katerina Tannenbaum) are catching up in a New York hotspot, when Lisette expresses her frustration at how involved technology is with her dating life. "It's actually not about him, it's about this," she says, pointing to her iPhone. "My phone is who I am in a relationship with…I'm so sick of it, I'm so done." To drive home the point, Lisette then accidentally tosses her phone across the bar and conveniently hits a handsome stranger, who then buys them both Gimlets, wheels in motion. It's not a subtle message: meeting IRL is the way. Lisette's not alone at this moment; she's embodying dating app fatigue. SEE ALSO: Sick of dating apps? Try a dungeon sound bath instead. "Is it any wonder 79 per cent of Gen Z daters and 80 per cent of millennial daters feel burnt out by dating apps, according to a 2024 study by Forbes Health?" writes Mashable's Rachel Thompson in her book, The Love Fix. "This is unsurprising given that these apps are now engineered to keep people active on these apps for as long as possible. To the apps, you're at your most valuable when you're an active user — trapped in the revolving door of swiping, matching, chatting. Where's the incentive to make dating apps work better, to allow your most valuable assets to break free?" Featured Video For You 'Babes' and the portrayal of period sex on screen Lisette even projects assumptions about single women "having it better" when courting in the 19th century — a trend that rears its head every time a new season of Bridgerton lands. When Carrie mentions that her house in Gramercy was built in the 1840s and that she loves picturing the women who lived there before her, Lisette cannonballs into venting about dating in 2025, describing being stood up by a psychiatrist whose text messages are deeply patronising. "It must have been so much easier to be single back then," Lisette says. "I mean, it's such a messed-up time to be dating." "It's no secret that singles have been disenchanted with dating apps lately," Mashable's Anna Iovine writes. "Users complain that apps are copying each other with similar features and encourage bad behavior like ghosting, and they're trying to branch out into IRL activities instead (even dungeon sound baths)." Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, and Cynthia Nixon in "And Just Like That..." Season 3. Credit: Craig Blankenhorn / Max Sex and the City and And Just Like That… have always dipped a toe in the relationship between sex, dating, relationships, and technology, though the former ended in 2004 before the dating app boom of the 2010s. Sex and the City dabbled in the online dating space in Season 2, episode 12, when Carrie's best friend Stanford (Willie Garson) met user "Bigtool4u" in a chatroom as "Rick9+" then IRL at a bar. And Just Like That… tried its hand with dating app discourse in Season 1. In episode 7, Carrie, a longtime tech agnostic, tries dating apps for the first time after the death of her husband (her publisher Amanda (Ashlie Atkinson) encourages her to go on a date to give her readers "some element of hope" at the end of her book on grief). Signed up by Seema (Sarita Choudhury) to an ambiguous dating platform, she swipes through a couple of profiles before she matches with 53-year-old widower Peter (Jon Tenney) and goes on a decent date with him (yes, it ends with them puking in the street, but it's still nice). Here, And Just Like That... missed an opportunity to connect with modern dating as it actually stands, as Carrie's experience really doesn't do justice to the real dating app fatigue users might identify with. Swiping through countless profiles has become synonymous with dating apps, with some apps like Tinder adding swiping limits and others like Bumble prone to cutting you off if they think you're on a swiping frenzy As Thompson writes in her book, "Dating, especially online dating, often feels like a numbers game — with emphasis on 'game.'" And luckily for Carrie, her experience doesn't include the complex "talking stage," the pressure around meeting up IRL, and the possibility of being ghosted, cloaked, or stood up. It's pretty breezy, right up until they both vomit in the gutter together. Seema (Sarita Choudhury) has a terrible experience with an IRL matchmaker. Credit: Craig Blankenhorn / Max Despite flouting real 2025 dating woes, Season 3 of And Just Like That… seems to be actively spurning all forms of digital connection at every turn. In the first episode, Seema quite literally sets her apartment on fire while waiting for a video call from her long-distance partner. But dating IRL doesn't get much easier for our characters — Miranda's (Cynthia Nixon) "dating bingo" goes terribly initially, and Seema's decision to use an in-person matchmaking service is a very disempowering experience for her. Entirely defined by Aidan's (John Corbett) set boundaries of communication, Carrie's long-distance relationship is portrayed as awkward and solitary — and mostly played out on smartphone. For the most part, branded with an unattainable "easy breezy" Cool Girl energy this season, Carrie is allowed fleetingly human moments of frustration over Aidan's lack of contact, constantly checking her phone for responses that come in mere emoji form. "Texting and emojis are not a relationship," Carrie vents to Miranda. "A relationship is standing across from someone and saying, 'What you do think?' and then they say, 'What do you think?'" Phone sex is deeply unsexy in Season 3, with a cringeworthy scene between Carrie and Aidan in the first episode. Thrown off by her staring kitten, Carrie fakes an orgasm on a call with Aidan and feels uncomfortable afterwards, deeming herself disingenuous. "I faked phone sex…and now I feel dishonest," she says to Miranda and Charlotte. Essentially, nobody wins when it comes to technology, sex, and relationships in And Just Like That... Season 3. It's reminiscent of a broader fatigue beyond the show, and may have people throwing their phones across bars just to fuck around and find out. And Just Like That... Season 3, episode 2 is now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes out Thursdays.
Elle
7 hours ago
- Elle
Did Carrie Just Meet Her Next Man on 'And Just Like That'?
Spoilers below. Carrie is narrating again. So much so, that she's using it not only to express her inner thoughts and writing, but also her texts. Yes, friends, Carrie is a speak-to-text enthusiast. As she and Aidan continue their long-distance relationship (after last week's phone sex debacle), she is actively dictating her correspondences to her on-off-lover as he looks after his family in Virginia. She drops phrases like, 'Hi love, period,' or 'exclamation point!' as if she is reading a telegram. She does this multiple times throughout the latest episode, 'Rate Race,' to an almost comical degree, as if to prove that this is how a 50-something woman uses a smartphone, even though we've never seen Carrie do this before. Anyway, she first broaches the topic of phone usage in the beginning of the episode when she meets her old neighbor Lisette, who now lives in her apartment. While Lisette, a jewelry designer, gifts Carrie a necklace bearing her old address, she also vents about her dating life. After a bad outing with a psychiatrist, Lisette realizes that the actual relationship she has is with her phone. She believes Carrie is so lucky she didn't have to deal with these kind of shenanigans 'back then'; dating must have been easier before texting and apps, right? (I don't know, Carrie still went through the wringer with a senator who loved golden showers, a Post-it breakup, and more.) Lisette ends up getting a guy to buy her (and Carrie) a drink at the bar, and Carrie later shows us that even though she was dating in the '90s and '00s, she's in a relationship with her phone now too. But first she takes us even further into the past—to 1846, the year the nameless protagonist of her latest writing project (otherwise known as 'the woman') is living in. Carrie said she often dreams of who used to live in her historical home, but before she can get too far into her draft, a swarm of rats dash out from the bushes in her garden, sending her running and screaming back into the house. She dictates her text to Aidan about the experience: 'Many, many rats, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point!' While Miranda is at work getting hooked on a queer reality dating show called Bi Bingo, Carrie has promptly hired people to de-pest her garden. To her surprise, Aidan shows up unannounced, partially because he 'felt weird' about how their last phone call went, and also because he misses her. Carrie shares her frustrations about being long distance. She doesn't want to keep Aidan away from his kids, but her new apartment is for the both of them; she wants to be able to share it—and her life—with him. Aidan bends the rules of their 'break,' allowing for Carrie to call and text him whenever she needs. But when Carrie gets in touch about a table she wants to get for their home, he responds with a simple thumbs down emoji. She vents about this at lunch with Seema and Miranda, but the latter seems more interested in discussing the events of Bi Bingo with their waitress. She jokes about the joy of hate-watching—is And Just Like That… being meta here? Is the show that self-aware? Seema, on the other hand, quips that she's currently in the habit of hate-dating, as in, she hates most of the recent dates she's been on and the men she's gone on them with. Her concerned coworker sets her up with Sydney, a matchmaker played by an amazing Cheri Oteri. Seema is rightfully skeptical, but once she realizes Sydney has studied her well enough to perfect her lunch order, she gives in. The issue, though, is that Sydney advises Seema to change almost everything about herself, from the way she dresses to the way she talks. For one date with a handsome man named Jake, Seema dresses in homely church clothes and holds her tongue for most of dinner, but when she comes clean about who she really is, Jake runs 'to the bathroom' (a.k.a. home). It's all too much for Seema. Yes, she's seeking a man, but she's not that desperate. After getting ditched, Seema dumps Sydney too. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Lisa arrive at their children's school to find fellow parents have broken code and hired an off-campus college consultant named Lois Fingerhood to get their kids into Ivy League universities. Feeling late to the game, Charlotte and Lisa make it their mission to get in touch with Lois by any means necessary—for their kids Lily and Herbert Jr.'s sake, of course. Thanks to some Instagram stalking from Charlotte's assistant, they find Lois at her son's T-ball game and corner her on the bleachers. Lily is too busy getting it on with her ballerina crush, Diego, to pick up her mother's calls, but she and Herbert Jr. eventually land a joint meeting with Ms. Fingerhood. It doesn't go well. When the meeting is over, the teens are in a panic. Lily was told she's too well-rounded and shouldn't mention 'that I'm Asian or adopted,' and Herbert Jr. was told to not to mention lacrosse and to have 'more relatable African-American experiences.' It's funny because that is what colleges want—kids to lean into stereotypes and exploit their trauma in their applications. At least Anthony is doing well. He just landed a brick-and-mortar spot for his dream Hotfellas Bakery, complete with baguette-shaped door handles and 'crotch-level' countertops. Miranda's new reality fixation might just get her a date. (Do you guys think she's watching the new season of Love Island too?) She and the waitress making her and Carrie's guacamole can't stop gabbing about the drama on their favorite show. But when Miranda asks the waitress out on a date, she reveals that she's straight and married… with two children. Miranda is confused. Didn't they have a spark? Why is this woman so engaged with queer television? The waitress shrugs and says it's just TV. 'I watch The Walking Dead, and I don't like zombies,' she says in an unnecessarily rude tone. Okay, first of all, that's different. Are we comparing bi people to zombies? During Pride month??? Poor Miranda, first a one-night stand with a virgin nun and now a heartless rejection from a waitress serving guacamole. Not all hope is lost though; Miranda is interested in Joy, a classy British colleague at work, but she's worried about starting an office romance. Carrie, of course, eggs her on. So many people have met their partners at work, Miranda! Carrie, however, might have just met her next partner at the stoop of her new apartment. When her cat slips out the door, a scruffy, muscly gardener picks her up before she can escape onto the street. And what are the odds? This charming landscaper named Adam (Logan Marshall-Dean), who's wearing a rugged band tee, is here to consult Carrie on her backyard renovation. Adam asks her about her ultimate vision for the space, but she's unsure. Not knowing is a good thing, Adam says, 'Because that means what's meant to be will show up.' Whether he's conscious of it or not, he's also referring to himself. Carrie might've been complacent with her arrangement with Aidan, but now that things are changing, she might just be open to something new. Maybe something with Adam.
