Season 14 of The Real Housewives of New York City kicked off with its premiere on July 16, and within the first few minutes, viewers were treated to a semi-group event and some delicious drama. Friends Sai De Silva, Brynn Whitfield and Jessel Taank got together for a playdate at Sai’s brownstone in Brooklyn. Jessel’s mom actually tagged along so she could watch Sai and Jessel’s kids — that way, the ladies could sneak into the backyard and talk about an incident that recently occurred.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town — in Washington Square Park to be exact — Erin Dana Lichy and Ubah Hassan met up to discuss that very same incident. Erin said she was “still feeling salty” about it all, as she revealed she recently tried planning a group dinner date at a restaurant. “It was super last minute,” so she picked a restaurant that would not only accommodate their group size, but have availability. “The restaurant used to be the hottest place in New York,” but Sai and Brynn didn’t think so. They “ditched the group dinner” because of it, and then two days later, posted on Instagram that they were at Casa Cipriani (a different restaurant that was more to their liking) that night. “It was hurtful” and “obnoxious”, Erin told Uba. Erin further explained that it would have been fine if Sai and Brynn were honest about what they were doing, but Erin only found out about the Casa Cipriani outing because of the photo Sai and Brynn posted on Instagram. And that was after Sai and Brynn canceled on Erin’s dinner reservation because they were “so tired”.
Back at Sai’s, Brynn explained that she bailed on Erin’s dinner plan because she “wouldn’t be caught dead” at the restaurant Erin booked. And Brynn only said she was “tired” because she didn’t know how to say how she really felt without sounding arrogant. Jessel and Brynn then joked that the restaurant Erin picked felt very “2005 or 2006” and only “D-list models” go there. “Olive Garden is chicer,” Brynn said. “They have good breadsticks! The breadsticks — they slap.”
But that’s not all — during Brynn and Sai’s one-on-one dinner date, Brynn told Sai that Erin was supposedly distancing herself from Sai because Sai “rubbed her the wrong way” during a different get-together that Erin hosted two weeks prior. Brynn explained that “supposedly, Sai asked, ‘What’s that?’ [about a charcuterie board at Erin’s]”, and when Sai learned it was a board full of cheese, she allegedly said, “Oh… you eat cheese? That’s weird.” Sai claimed she never said anything bad about the cheese — in fact, she said she was often seen with “a mouth full of cheese” at the get together. And as we later learned, Erin was never mad at Sai for the cheese sitaution. So was Brynn making it all up to create some drama? Either way, the ladies were at odds with each other within the first few minutes of the episode, so if it was Brynn’s plan to cause drama, it was working.
Later in the episode, Jenna Lyons invited the entire group to her house for light snacks and drinks — and yes, she had lots of cheese. She even made fondue. Jenna asked everyone to wear “khaki and black”, but none of these ladies really owned anything khaki-colored, so most of them just wore black.
Anyway, after the group started arriving, Sai admitted to Erin that she skipped her dinner reservation because she didn’t want to go to the restaurant that Erin had chosen. She took “full responsibility” for it, and Erin appreciated that because Sai was actually being “real and honest” about her decision to bail. According to Erin, Brynn is not as straight-forward as Sai, which is why she had more of a problem with Brynn then she did with Sai.
Brynn was the last to arrive at the former J.Crew executive’s apartment and that’s because she was “scared” and knew she’d “get in trouble” for what she did to Erin. Jenna tried breaking the ice with a game of “two truths and a lie”, but the conversation quickly returned to the issues amongst the group. Sai wanted to know why Erin wasn’t happy with her over the charcuterie board incident, but Erin said she was never mad about the cheese stuff. She actually accused Brynn of lying to Sai about the whole situation. Then, Erin started going after Brynn for ditching her dinner reservation and making up a story about her being upset with Sai. Brynn said she heard what she heard, but Erin said her interpretation of events wasn’t accurate.
The ladies got frustrated with Erin and Brynn for prolonging their fight about cheese, so they took their conversation to Jenna’s bedroom where they could talk in private. And that’s when Brynn basically admitted that she fabricated some of what she said. Brynn said she got hung up in aligning herself with Sai, and in turn, she “got weird” with Erin. But in the end, they apologized to each other and agreed to “move on” from it. We honestly couldn’t believe these ladies dropped their conversation about sex to talk about cheese — even Jenna couldn’t understand it — but that’s what happened.
Want more? New episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City air Sundays at 9pm on Bravo.