Popcorn is getting truffled, sodas replaced with fancy juices and bags of M&M’s swapped for fairytale macaroons in a trend that’s elevating the cinema-going experience into a gourmet treat.
Following the lead of New York and London, the menu at filmmaker Luc Besson’s newly opened multiplex cinema outside Paris includes munchies like caviar, smoked salmon, and macaroons by one of the country’s top pastry chefs, Pierre Hermé.
The EuropaCorp cinema, which opened this month, is the latest theater around Paris to give new meaning to the term dinner and a movie, placing renewed importance on film food.
Cinema social club Le Popcorn Project, which shows films at Le Club de L’Etoile near the Champs-Elysées, has tapped the city’s burgeoning food truck scene to cater its monthly screenings and offer gourmet sandwiches, dim sum, savory tarts, quiches and pies.
Indie movie theaters and boutiques in New York and London have likewise been offering more sophisticated versions of cheese sauce-soaked nachos and popcorn for gourmand cinephiles.
Over at Edible Cinema in London, food is synchronized with the movie to add another dimension to the movie-watching experience. For instance, during a scene in “Pan’s Labyrinth” where characters run through a pine forest, patrons munch on pine-smoked popcorn to evoke the sensation of the trees and the sound of the needle-laden forest floor.
And at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn, chefs create film and food pairings that involve tucking into meals like blood orange gastrique, and a ‘Bucket of Blood’ cocktail during a screening of the horror flick “Carrie.”
