Nothing used to go together like dinner and a show. All that has changed since the big theater chains sliced and diced the cinema palaces into multiplexes, jacked up the prices, and wedged audiences into movies like lettuce in a crisper. That good old Saturday-night cheap treat has turned into an expensive stress test involving finding a movie and restaurant close enough to each other that you can swing by, pick up tickets before dinner, and get back soon enough to find two seats not up front in the whiplash section. (Sure, you can call Loews’s new Tele Ticket line to reserve tickets in advance, but you still have to wait in line to pick them up.)
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Nowadays the food-movie connection is more important than ever because movies have gotten so bad. Take graphic, boring sex–most of us don’t have to leave the house for that. I have a feeling a lot of people are just there for the popcorn–or Raisinets, which don’t taste the same with the lights on. At least they’re honest calories, unlike the unbuttered popcorn my dieting friends insist tastes pretty good. Of course it does. Unless you see the magic word “air,” it’s been popped in coconut oil.
There’s even good food that’s good for you: a great roasted-vegetable hero sandwich with creamy melted goat cheese on lightly grilled French bread, served with crisp coleslaw ($6.95); and a fresh fish of the day ($11.95)–on one occasion the best fish we’d ever tasted, a thick, juicy piece of char-grilled halibut with a delicate orange cream sauce, accompanied by brown rice tossed with vegetable chunks. (I love the way restaurants are responding to the public’s interest in healthier foods by char-grilling the fish, serving it rare, and highballing the price so we can pretend it’s steak. When I was a kid they got fish down us by hiding it in cholesterol-laden mayonnaise–gourmets used Miracle Whip–or saturating it with melted butter.)
