Restaurant reality show 'Serving the Hamptons' returns for season 2, now streaming on Max

The restaurant reality show “Serving the Hamptons” is back for a second course. Set at the popular Southampton spot 75 Main and chronicling the staff working under owner Zach Erdem, the show moved from the streaming service Discovery+ to the sister service Max when it returned on Feb. 2 after a two-year hiatus.

“So the delay was because it became a Max program with the merger” of WarnerMedia and Discovery in April 2022, says Teresa Sorkin, 44, of Manhattan, an executive producer of the series. “So they restructured all of their programming, [including] all the shows that would've aired on Discovery. Once the merger went through and the dust settled is when they decided when programming was happening.” Season 2 filmed throughout summer 2022.

The first season, filmed in 2021, premiered all six episodes on April 7, 2022, and featured three Long Islanders among the staff: V.I.P. host Samantha Crichton, who was born in Manhasset and raised in Bellmore; server Hailey Druek, who was born in Southampton and grew up in East Quogue; and host, now fellow V.I.P. host Jillian Gough, originally of Cold Spring Harbor and the daughter of Craig Gough and Kim Lohan Gough — one of two sisters of Lindsay Lohan’s father, Michael Lohan Sr.

Also returning are manager Victoria Hilton; former server, now fellow manager Jack Tavcar; former head chef, now event chef Brogan Wu; DJ Ethan Thompson; and former bartender, now lead bartender Jodie Bisasor. Another first-season bartender, Ryan Fitzpatrick, “is not on” this season, Sorkin said without elaborating.

New to the show are bartenders Noelle Villella, of Oceanside, who is also a registered nurse; and Keith Winfrey, of Mastic Beach, who as a William Floyd High School football player was named first-team All-Long Island by Newsday and now plays for Stony Brook University.

Also new are V.I.P. host Joey Joy — his real name, per Pennsylvania’s Westminster College, where he played varsity football — who previously was in the cast of the Netflix reality show “Too Hot To Handle”; and new head chef Mike Catuosco, of Commack, who, according to his resume, has cooked at his hometown restaurants Prato 850 and Athenian Greek Taverna.

Jillian Gough’s antics had been a focus of season 1, from her drinking too much and not showing up for work the next day in the premiere episode to a love triangle with Crichton — now her close friend — and Thompson. She continues to be prominent this season, although one incident, Sorkin says, did not make it on air.

In episode 2, Erdem erupts in anger when things go wrong at “Real Housewives of New York City” and “Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip” star Jill Zarin’s annual Luxury Luncheon, a thyroid-cancer benefit in Southampton that 75 Main (and the Manhattan burger restaurant Whitmans) catered.

“The night before, [the staff] had a birthday party for Joey,” says Sorkin. “And obviously we filmed it all and they got drunk and they got [to the luncheon] late and the food was late and Jill had a conniption.” But also, “Jillian, who's [actor] Lindsay Lohan's cousin, was given sort of a gag order to not mention Lindsay or the family at all the whole season. And so her family happened to be at the luncheon and they had an altercation with her, which we did not use for the show. We didn't want to have upset Jillian.”

Lindsay’s mother, Dina Lohan, who did not respond to a Newsday request for comment, and the star's younger brother, Dakota, were the attendees, Sorkin said. “They were afraid Jillian would talk about stuff, which she hasn't. That particular day, Jillian had a breakdown because of this altercation with her family, and therefore everything broke down. And Zach was, like, ‘This cannot happen again. It's embarrassing.’ ”

That said, “We did shoot a season 3,” Sorkin says. “It has not been picked up by the network yet. I anticipate that it will be, but I don't want to jinx it.”