A Fancy Dinner With Your Movie (and No Popcorn!)

Recession? What recession? At a time when many of us are renting two-for-one DVDs at Blockbuster and curling up on the couch with Chinese takeout from Safeway, a deluxe new multiplex is betting on a very different model of moviegoing. After its soft opening two weekends ago, Gold Class Cinemas in Redmond is now offering new, first-run movies with drinks and upscale finger food that could run you $200 per couple.

Nationally, places like the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, have succeeded with new and repertory titles, beer, and popular prices for food and tickets. But the food-and-movie concept has an erratic history in Seattle. The poorly located old Aurora Cinema Grill at 130th Street featured sloppy burgers and second-run titles before folding in 2002. Belltown's Big Picture and the Big Picture Redmond offer lower ticket prices ($11) for first-run movies and booze, but no food unless with private catered events. The Central District's three-year-old Central Cinema is more of a modestly priced pizza joint with beer and wine; the programming on its projection video screen (with $5 tickets) is, at best, eclectic to random.

Yet Gold Class is aiming at an entirely different sector of the market, betting that moneyed moviegoers will pay more to see a movie away from the mob (or their kids at home). Here's my unproven industry rule-of-thumb: For every inch that flat-screen TVs increase in size, Hollywood ticket sales drop another percentage point. With fewer customers coming in the door, theater operators—who make most of their money on candy and soda—have to extract more revenue per patron. How much more? Take a deep breath, and ride with me to the Eastside.

My date and I arrived at Redmond Town Center on a recent Sunday night. The old AMC multiplex died earlier this year, and the empty space has been completely refurbished by Village Roadshow, an Australian media conglomerate with one other such venue in the States and 50 more planned.

Valet parking is supposedly included in the ticket price ($32 per person, $22 matinees, plus online booking fee), but as we drove into the parking lot, I didn't see any attendants. Fortunately, on opening weekend, parking was easy to grab on the curb. Discreet signage leads to the outdoor mall's upper level, where the Gold Class lobby resembles the W Hotel or a comparable Euro-boutique. There's a bar on one side (open to the mall-shopping public, shhhh!); on the other is a lounge with a fireplace and low furniture. Vintage black-and-white set photos adorn the walls. The lighting is expensive; the Venetian blinds are made of wood. Polite, black-uniformed staff, hovering solicitously around the ticket kiosk, also put you in mind of a private jet terminal.

We opened a tab with our tickets to Pride and Glory, a cop melodrama starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell, then were escorted to the lounge and presented with menus. A new server swiftly appeared to take our drink orders. A Ketel One martini was crisp and well-presented; a cold pint of Mac & Jack's came in a tall glass flute. This was not the place for plastic soda cups or styrofoam tubs full of popcorn.

In fact, there is no popcorn on the one-page menu, which is divided into "bigger," "smaller," and "sweeter" (i.e., dessert). Gold Class has its own kitchen, and almost everything it serves is designed to be eaten by hand or poached from your date's plate. You could describe the cuisine as luxury appetizers, ranging in price from an $8 salad to a $19 steak sandwich. "When would you like your food to arrive during the movie?" we were asked. How long was the movie? We had no idea, so we requested the appetizers during the credits and the rest halfway through. Our server returned to usher us into the theater, carrying our drinks for us.

Up at the ticket counter, we'd been asked to select seats from a computer display, like airline or concert seating. But when we entered our theater, we were the only patrons among 40 plush red overstuffed seats, spaced widely apart on terraced platforms so that servers can easily deliver orders. Then, as if flying Air France, we were given a demo of the hidden purse compartment, recliner controls, and glowing green call light. Between us was a burnished metal tray—not like your tacky TV tray—where our drinks were set. (Forget snuggling: The wide seats are separated by about two feet of immovable armrests.) "It's like the private screening room for some Hollywood mogul," my date whispered.

The crabcake quartet starter came in four neat, white Chinese soup spoons. In the dark, with Norton and Farrell already brawling and boozing on screen, that meant carefully slurping down each crab spoonful like an oyster. The lemon-infused morsels were fresh and well presented, but also gone in four swift $4 gulps.

An hour later, as cops and drug dealers blurred together and we noticed we were starving, our server returned. Perhaps we shoulda hit the call button, but movie etiquette somehow inhibited us. In the empty theater, we even could have called out for him—but still didn't. Manners!