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Like many a New York City crime thriller, Netflix’s Black Rabbit thrives in the shadow of the mighty Brooklyn Bridge. But in exploring the nitty gritty of the city’s nightlife, the series’ titular haunt taps into the city’s history that predates even the foundation of the bridge.
While the Black Rabbit is very much a fictional restaurant in this new Netflix original starring Jude Law and Jason Bateman, the building that doubles as The Rabbit is very much real, a living archive of a past carved by pirates, bartenders, hurricanes, and even a lady who was probably the world’s first female bouncer.
Read on to discover the New York spots where it all came together.
What is Black Rabbit about?
Black Rabbit centres on estranged brothers Jake (Jude Law) and Vince Friedkin (Jason Bateman). While Jake makes a seemingly honest living running the Black Rabbit joint, his street-smart swindler of a brother wreaks havoc when he returns with some debtors and criminals hot on his trails. With Jake looking to expand to a new location beyond the Rabbit, binge-worthy chaos follows.
As the title implies, the three-storey restaurant is crucial to the storyline. Show runner Zach Baylin (King Richard) notes that it has ‘rock n’ roll DNA’. Baylin adds that he always thought of the restaurant as having Michelin-star prestige but without uptown pretentiousness.
The first two floors form the outer layer, a feel-good eatery with a cocktail bar. But the third floor is where the party continues. As the show’s co-creator Kate Susman puts it, this is where ‘it’s the late-night, anything-goes spot in the Rabbit’.
Is Black Rabbit a real restaurant?
The location that provides the setting for Jake’s fancy hang is the site of the now-defunct Bridge Cafe at Manhattan’s 279 Water Street. The site of this restaurant-bar is a much-chronicled piece of land that has been functional since 1794. Back then, the spot evolved from a grocery to a tavern. It also temporarily doubled as a brothel from 1847 to 1860.
Production designer Alex DiGerlando’s deep dive into the building’s lore reveals that in the 1800s, the building was also christened as The Hole in the Wall, ‘a nefarious salon’ reputed for ‘grisly killings and notoriously violent fights that culminated with fingers being cut off and displayed in a pickle jar on the bar counter’.
Centuries before this site would have Jude Law bossing around an overworked restaurant crew, this salon also kept in its employ the first known female bouncer, a six-foot tall New York folklore icon named Gallus Mag.
It was only in 1974 when the spot traded beer-stained counters with a white tablecloth aesthetic as The Bridge Cafe. Despite its name and its proximity to the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan cafe’s original building predates the bridge by 75 years.
The cafe kept on attracting New Yorkers until Hurricane Sandy forced its closure in 2012. Since then, efforts were made for reconstruction and rehabilitation only for the cafe’s deed signed away in 2021. Its current owners haven’t revealed if the site would harbour bars and restaurants yet again, but Black Rabbit still preserves the building’s fine and not-so-fine dining history.
Location manager Paul Eskenazi describes it best when he says, ‘It doesn’t scream “movie set,” it sort of whispers: “You’re not supposed to be here,” which is exactly the vibe we wanted.
How did Black Rabbit turn a derelict cafe into a swanky restaurant?
Interestingly, the crew initially used the building’s rundown state for filming a flashback sequence where Jason Bateman’s Vince pitches the building’s moneymaking potential to his brother.
Batema, who also directed the first two episodes, adds: ‘We kept it as it was at first, and then we built what it would become four years later on stages. Alex (DiGerlando) just nailed the vision of this British tavern type of bar and mixed it with the Lower East Side.’
The British influences were also intentional given that the Friedkin brothers are depicted as amateur rock n’ roll musicians in their heyday. For reference, DiGerlando, looked at the houses of rock stalwarts like Jimmy Page and Keith Richards who dwell in these ‘amazing English estates’. And that’s how the restaurant was given a vintage makeover resembling an English countryside tavern, ‘the kind you could imagine stumbling into after a long day of traveling.’
The exterior of the fictional Black Rabbit restaurant is similar to the real Manhattan building, but the interiors were significantly revamped. But even during the makeover, DiGerlando took inspiration from the bare bones and dusty floors of the 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. We just pulled our favourite moments into the design.’
Despite the tavern influences, Black Rabbit also consciously evokes the visual identity of classic New York diners like Chumley’s, One if by Land, Two if by Sea, Fraunces Tavern, and Freemans Restaurant.
Seems like there’s something for everyone at Black Rabbit.
What are the other filming locations of Black Rabbit?
The series is set and filmed entirely in New York with DiGerlando insisting that apart from creating the Black Rabbit from scratch, he didn’t set out to create an alternate version of the city. This means most of the locations appear as they are in real life.
Even Black Rabbit’s British leading man Jude Law can’t help but get a bit romantic to describe the series’s New York setting. ‘That’s a big cliché: “It’s a character in the film.” But it really is a character in our drama.’
For instance, the Mancuso crime family’s betting operation is shown below the actual 10th Street Russian & Turkish baths.
‘We made the specific decision not to change the name or make it “Mancuso’s” or anything like that. We wanted it to feel like a place where you could be walking down the street and see it, identify it, and say, “This is where the events of Black Rabbit took place.”’ The production designer adds.
For the scenes set in Brooklyn’s Coney Island district, the crew filmed mainly in different neighbourhoods in South Brooklyn. Popular Coney Island destinations like the Aquarium and the Cyclone wooden rollercoaster in Luna Park also make their way into the series.
Where is the other Black Rabbit restaurant located?
Apart from the Black Rabbit, a significant restaurant in the series The Pool Room, an up-end spot where Law’s Jake plans to move and expand his hospitality horizons. More polished and geometric than the tavern-ish dinginess of Black Rabbit, Ezkenazi calls the Pool Room ‘the yin to Black Rabbit’s yang’.
The real-life Pool Room is The Pool, a restaurant that stands on the site of the erstwhile Four Seasons Hotel that once boasted its own famed Pool Room. Since Four Seasons’s closure in 2019, the restaurant was restored by Major Food Group as The Pool.
The Netflix series largely features The Pool in its actual form with the crew not tinkering much with the interiors. For Ezkenazi, there was ‘no finding’ the location but rather just filming inside.
Who stars in Black Rabbit?
Jason Bateman and Jude Law lead the series as a duo of brothers who don’t see eye to eye but still look out for each other in times of dire financial need and life-threatening robberies.
For Bateman, Black Rabbit is yet another stellar opportunity like the Netflix series Ozark to prove his dramatic chops after a stellar career in comedies like Arrested Development and Horrible Bosses. As for Law, he’s yet again smoothly transitioning from films to TV series after leading stints in The New Pope and Star Wars’s Skeleton Crew.
The supporting cast also includes Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur (CODA, Foundation) as a mob boss, Cleopatra Coleman (Infinity Pool, Clipped) as the restaurant’s interior designer, and Amaka Okafor (Bodies, The Sandman) as the head chef.
When and where can I watch Black Rabbit?
Black Rabbit hits Netflix on Thursday, September 18.
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