Lisa Vanderpump shared her opinion on Katie Maloney and Ariana Madix’s soft opening for their sandwich shop, Something About Her.
The “Vanderpump Rules” stars hosted a soft opening for family and friends days before their public grand opening set for May 22, 2024, according to The WeHo Times. But the SUR owner thinks they did it all wrong.
Vanderpump missed the soft opening because she had been out of town, but she may have skipped it anyway. Speaking with Us Weekly on May 20, Vanderpump suggested that Maloney and Madix should have taken time to get their restaurant going before inviting friends to visit.
“We’ll have a soft opening in a restaurant, but we won’t really invite people until, you know, you are kind of two or three weeks in so you can kind of iron out the things,” she explained to the outlet. “I don’t wanna go there and judge that now. Let’s give them a couple of weeks a month to settle in. I think that’s normally what we do in the restaurant business.”
Something About Her is located at 649 N Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. The sandwich shop will be open to the public on May 22, 2024, at 10 a.m.
Lisa Vanderpump Was Critical of the Duo’s Sandwich Shop Delays
Maloney and Madix began working on their sandwich shop in 2021 and were hit with many delays. In November 2023, Maloney spoke during the “Sur’Ving Up the Latest With Vanderpump Rules” panel at BravoCon and revealed that there were permit problems due to changes on the street that the shop is located on.
“It’s unimaginable like how many hoops you have to jump through and how much red tape there actually is, especially in West Hollywood,” Maloney said at BravoCon. “It’s like, they’re sticklers. So it’s just been inspection after inspection and things that pop up. So it’s like, we’re right now getting a new water heater. Some final things that have popped up in the eleventh hour.”
According to The Sun, in January 2024, issues with city permits were still ongoing.
During the “Vanderpump Rules” season 11 reunion filmed in March, Madix and Maloney were asked what they attributed the delays in the opening to. “We didn’t know what was lying ahead. Which was a bunch of red tape and all sorts of issues,” Maloney explained.
Host Andy Cohen turned to Lisa Vanderpump and asked her what her “take” on the situation was. “I disagree,” the restaurateur said. “I think it was a multitude of disagreements, of Ariana being away. You could get through your drain issue and your health issue in a year.”
Madix, who spent months in New York City City to star in “Chicago” on Broadway, chimed in to say, “We’ve never had a disagreement about me being away.”
“If it was just purely the city and the red tape, it wouldn’t take a year to get through that,” Vanderpump fired back.
Madix and Maloney insisted that those issues did take a year and pointed out they also had a patio issue. Vanderpump then addressed their falling out with their former consultant, chef Penny Davidi. According to Reality Tea, Maloney and Madix butted heads with Davidi over partnership in the business and the Something About Her trademark and cut ties with her.
“Penny thought she was going to be a partner, that’s what she thought,” Vanderpump said.
Cohen asked Vanderpump if she regretted hooking Davidi up with Madix and Maloney. “If Penny ends up hurt, yes I do,” she replied. “I think she had high hopes for building a brand with them and something went wrong. But I don’t know exactly what it was. It’s in the hands of lawyers.”
Maloney explained that what they wanted from Davidi and what she wanted to offer were very different things. Madix said, “It was a mismatch.”
Katie Maloney & Ariana Madix Celebrated SAH’s Soft Opening With Other Bravo Friends
While Vanderpump stayed away from the soft opening, Maloney and Madix hosted many other friends on May 16 and 17.
Guests during the two-day opener included former “Vanderpump Rules” co-stars Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute, “Summer House” star Lindsay Hubbard, “The Valley” star Janet Caperna, and even Cohen.
On May 17, Cohen posted a video of Something About Her’s yellow and white striped awning to his Instagram story. “When in Los Angeles…Oh, yeah, going to get sandwiches!” he said.
