It’s been a while since our last Untapped Mailbag in which we answer questions from readers, submitted via Twitter, Facebook or e-mail. But we received quite a challenge from reader Hanna, who wanted to know which restaurant was featured in the season 1 finale of Broad City on Comedy Central. Nearly the entire episode, entitled “The Last Supper,” takes place in inside, where the main characters Abbi and Ilana head to the fictional “Octavia,” a fancy restaurant for Abbi’s birthday. Ilana gets a near fatal allergy to seafood and Abbi accidentally injects herself with the Epipen. We usually send these queries to our team at Untapped Cities and collectively try to hunt down answers.
This film locations question was tricky, because like in many film and tv scenes, interior and exterior shots are in different places. The exterior was easy to find–it’s the restaurant City Hall New York on Duane Street. But the interior was trickier. A former colleague of Untapped writer Benjamin Waldman, Rick Sadowski, correctly recognized that the interior was filmed at Firebird, a Russian restaurant on W. 47th Street in Restaurant Row that’s now closed. With a gold and green ceiling, bookshelves and walls packed with art, it’s a pretty distinctive space. The space is still up for lease.
See more film locations from Broad City and check out our Film Locations column.