‘Severance’ Options Upstate New York Restaurant Phoenicia Diner

Followers of tv sequence Severance and individuals who have hung out within the Catskills will acknowledge a well-recognized restaurant within the newest episode of the Apple TV+ present. Phoenicia Diner, situated within the gorgeously distant hamlet of Phoenicia, New York, reprises its function as Pip’s Bar & Grille within the fictional Northeast city of Kier.

Severance is a thriller satire about company work cultures, centered on the omnipresent (and cult-like) firm of Lumon run by the Eagan household. Choose Lumon staff — like Adam Scott’s Mark and Britt Decrease’s Helly — bear a process often called “severance,” which splits them into two selves: an workplace self (“innies”) and a real-world self (“outies”). The restaurant Pip’s takes its identify from a member of the Eagan household, Phillip “Pip” Eagan. However the identify additionally works as a play on efficiency enchancment plans (aka PIPS), formal documentation given to staff to course-correct at work.

And that’s the place Phoenicia Diner stepped in. Earlier than the Emmy-winning sequence premiered, Courtney Malsatzki, the restaurant’s director of operations, acquired an e-mail saying {that a} new Apple TV program was thinking about filming on the diner and requested if they might go to. She agreed, and it occurred to be Ben Stiller, the manager producer and director for Severance. He visited the diner with one other particular person concerned with Severance, they usually sat in the identical sales space that may later be used on the present. “They spent a number of hours there they usually have been identical to mapping scenes,” Malsatzki says. “So I used to be instantly like, ‘I feel they’re filming right here.’”

Courtesy of Apple

On the time, Malsatzki couldn’t discuss what was taking place till the trailer aired, however conserving the key was difficult. The restaurant needed to shut down for filming and the outside and inside adjustments have been apparent. “We had so many emails,” she tells Eater, particularly when the non permanent Pip’s signal was put up. “I used to be getting 100 emails a day — ‘I can’t consider you closed;’ ‘What are you pondering?’ — hate emails, unhappy emails, simply every little thing.”

As soon as the primary trailer aired in January 2022, “it was an enormous stress launch,” she says. “Not solely was it cool to see how they made it look and see someplace you’re keen on on the large TV, it was additionally like, ‘Okay, all people is aware of. Thank god.’” The ensuing scene reveals Mark eating on the restaurant as a result of he bought a present card from Lumon to make up for a piece harm.

For the second season of Severance, Phoenicia Diner returns as Pip’s. This time, it serves because the setting for a scene the place Mark and his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) have an essential dialogue at a sales space alongside the window whereas consuming mugs of scorching espresso. On the identical time, a Lumon henchman lingers on the counter, spying on them.

Severance turns the throwback appeal of Phoenicia Diner’s on itself, making the diner, a spot that’s universally comforting and acquainted, right into a extra insidious backdrop in a city that threatens to show folks into senseless cogs.