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Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney are being shaded by their former Something About Her chef, Penny Davidi.
Following her falling out with the Vanderpump Rules stars, who opened their sandwich shop in May after months of delays, Penny, 52, slammed the girls’ offerings at the new venue, confirming that it is “not her menu” and “not the sandwiches” that she curated, but suggesting that “50 percent” of her ideas were used to create the food items.
“This is not what I put together. This is not the vision that I had for this place,” Penny told The U.S. Sun on May 30. “People wanted something spectacular. The sandwiches sound sexy, but unfortunately, looked underwhelming.”
According to Penny, who has also worked with Lisa Vanderpump, 63, Something About Her’s menu “doesn’t make sense” and has “many different kinds of bread” used for multiple sandwiches.
“They don’t know how to cross-utilize. I would not bring in five different kinds of bread for 10 sandwiches,” she remarked. “I also would not put certain sandwiches on certain kinds of bread because the bread-to-meat ratio is completely off from what I’ve seen in photos and people’s posts.”
Speaking specifically of The Meg, which features tzatziki, feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, herbs, and romaine lettuce on lavash, Penny said she “would never put a Greek Goddess sandwich in a lavash wrap as it’s so moist and is going to fall apart.”
After noting that Ariana, 38, and Katie, 37, spent “way less money” than fans think on Something About Her, Penny suggested that many of her ideas were used to create the venue’s current menu.
“The sandwiches are not my creations, but they are definitely using some ingredients in each one that I introduced them to like Boursin cheese. I can say 50% of the menu are items that I gave them and they changed some things.”
Just under two weeks after its long-awaited opening, insiders claimed that customers waited hours, only to be disappointed on day one.
“The store opened 30 minutes late, leaving everyone waiting outside frustrated. And on top of that, the store’s POS system wasn’t working at the time, so everything was very chaotic and unorganized,” they alleged.
As for the future success of Something About Her, Penny questions if Ariana and Katie will make it because they are not “restaurant operators.”
“Keeping the business going will be challenging,” she claimed. “At some point, the fans will realize that the only person they will see at the shop is [Teri Maloney], Katie’s mom. It’s a once-and-done kind of place. It’s not a business that can be scaled. Unfortunately, their overhead is going to be too high and they can’t make enough product.”
Continuing on, Penny said that any success Ariana and Katie do see should be credited to Lisa and criticized them for not taking more of her advice.
“If it wasn’t for her, they wouldn’t be on a TV show and have the success that they have had. They didn’t listen to her when she advised them to speak to me and get things resolved so they can have a successful business and not run out of sandwiches and serve stale bread,” she stated.
Amid rumors of chaos and dysfunction, Teri shared a photo of the exterior of Something About Her on her Instagram Story, which featured a line of patrons at the sandwich shop.
“The Something About Her line is still going strongggg,” Best of Bravo wrote in the caption of a reshare of the post on Instagram.
As Pump Rules fans may have heard, Penny has been insisting she is still a partner in Something About Her and owns “10 percent of the business,” despite Ariana and Katie denying the claim.
“We didn’t sign a contract,” she previously told The U.S. Sun. “There’s an intent I sent them [and] they’re like, ‘Okay, just email us everything you want and we’ll run it by our attorneys.’ So I have the email. I sent them everything that I wanted, which was a monthly fee, and then the percentage of the entire Something About Her brand, not of one store.”
