La Goulette is a trendy Mediterranean restaurant on Manhattan's Lower East Side that is staffed by a group of struggling artists, stuck working as servers to pay the bills. Among them are Jack, the day-dreaming bartender; Aisha a loudly feminist spoken-word poet; Alex, a prankster pot-dealer; Jeff, the stoned and under qualified Executive Chef ; Natalie, an obsessive-compulsive career server; and Brie, a show tunes singing small town sweetheart. Eighty-Sixed follows them as they resist getting caught up in the day-to-day frustrations of working in a restaurant and struggle to strike a balance between making art and making a living amid the distractions of pranks, love affairs, jealousy, shady investors, a strung-out management team, and crazy customers.
—Leila Ben-Abdallah