Thursday, September 27, 2007

Movie Tavern vs. Studio Movie Grill: A Guest Post

A guest post from RJS

I took a break from the kids last night and went to see Eastern Promises with Charles. We have decided that the movie-dinner-drinks combo is a brilliant idea and usually go to the Movie Tavern in Bedford.
Now before we get started, the Movie Tavern experience has greatly improved in the last couple of years since the original Movie Tavern was bought out. What used to be a dank, old movie theater whose single draw was cheap beer you could drink during your movie with waiters bringing you your meal from a small menu of frozen pizza, micro-waved buffalo wings, (gross) or mini corn dogs (also pretty gross), has turned into a pleasant experience. They remodeled theaters and brought in a full menu including some pretty good salads, a full bar drink menu, a good beer selection and some nice wines as well. Apparently, the trend has taken off, a sign of this being the new chain of Movie Diners called, Studio Movie Grill. The newest one is in Arlington, and as it was the only one showing Eastern Promises (I will save that review for another day) so we thought we would try it.
The first problem was the broken automated ticketing machine outside (I don’t know why since I think they just opened) which wasn’t a really big deal. The inside was very nice and new and without the stale popcorn smells which I appreciated, but the theater seating was a disappointment with row upon row of rolling black desk chairs! Movie Tavern has nice traditional reclining seats and I was not super excited about rolling around with my glass of wine. We ordered chicken nachos, I had a glass of cabernet and Charlie had a margarita. The glass of wine was good and they gave a full glass (I needed every drop just to get through the movie), Charlie had a good frozen Margarita but had to ask for a straw after he got tired of licking the margarita from the glass. The nachos were okay, but there wasn’t much chicken, in fact we had a hard time finding anything beneath the huge mound of shredded lettuce. I think there were a few chips and some chicken beneath all that, but I got a little tired of looking for it. I didn’t mind as I lost my appetite in the first 5 minutes of the movie. They gave us a coaster which had a button you pushed when you wanted to signal your waiter. This didn’t work either, and since there were no waiters in sight we were never able to order drink refills or additional food. Movie Tavern always brings your ticket about 35 minutes before the end of the movie, so you can leave promptly – no such luck here. We had to sit through all the end credits and then some because they waited until the movie was over to bring our ticket. I have to say I will stay with the original here – Movie Tavern has it down. Their waiters are well trained, their food is great, and the entire experience is much more comfortable.

Editor Summary: Go to Movie Tavern

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good post. It is rare to find any Movie/Dinner Theatre that has good food. I love the concept but it is rarely done well.