Fans turn up at sellout Golden Girls restaurant in Los Angeles

A pop-up restaurant's opened up in Beverly Hills, California, with iconic parts of the famous girls' home lovingly recreated.

Dozens of fans lined up outside ahead of the first seating at the sell-out experience on Saturday, eager to get a glimpse inside.

"This is the main attraction. This is the primo of the pop up", explains Derek Berry from Bucket Listers, the organisers, as he shows Reuters around a replica of the famous kitchen.

"So, of course, you're looking at the very famous Golden Girl set here. No details missed.. The garlic clove, the calendar, the cake molds. Of course, this painting, we couldn't just do any old painting. We had to have the exact one, the yellow phone, the exact amount of cabinets. Those little details were so important. The Golden Girls fan knows what they're looking for, and if we didn't really put that extra effort in. I don't think it would have went this far, so no detail was spared. We really made sure we recreated it."

Among the attractions, a bar dedicated to Shady Pines - the nursing home which burned down, leading to the arrival of acerbic Sophia, mother of Dorothy and played by the late Estelle Getty. Man-eater Blanche's bedroom has also been recreated - complete with the iconic wallpaper instantly recognisable to fans:

"This is a classic moment. I think it's one of the most famous moments of the entire show. It wasn't necessarily in like every episode, but it's so synonymous. When you see these banana leaves and this pattern, you go. "All right, that's Golden Girls" adds Berry.

"This is wonderful. I love it. I love the set, Blanche's room, the lanai. It's wonderful" says diner, Joanne Minor, 59, who has travelled from Scottsdale, Arizona with her three sisters. "I'm definitely Dorothy" she says as her sister, Debra Reed, 63, jumps in: "I'm Blanche! How could you not want to come here? We're golden girls. We're all sisters. We had to come. We are fans for a long, long time."

Just meters away sits Maria Triana with her husband Pablo who she converted to a fan:

"I've been watching Golden Girls since I was actually a little girl. And then when we started dating, I got him into it one day on a trip" she tells Reuters, with Pablo adding: "Yeah, I thought it was.. Because I watch Married with Children. I'm thinking it's not as good. Six episodes later on. I go "You keep that on. Want to keep going."

Bucket List says the event sold out almost immediately and it's looking to extend until the Los Angeles run until the end of the year. The experience is also planning to move to Chicago, New York, San Francisco and, of course, Miami, where the show was set.

The Golden Girls ran for seven years from 1985 for almost 200 episodes. The final remaining cast member, Betty White, who played dippy Rose, passed away in 2021.