#75 – NITEHAWK QUESO at NITEHAWK CINEMA

For the third year in a row, I’m going to attempt to eat every single item on Time Out New York’s annual 100 Best Dishes list. In no particular order, here’s my take on their Top 100. Let the gluttony continue…

If I wasn’t writing about food, I might have started a movie review blog. Would anybody read, “Watch This NY”?

In high school I reviewed movies for the local newspaper and every once in a while I waste too much time rating movies on Netflix. But new movies don’t excite me any more. I still watch plenty of old movies on DVD, but the act of going to the movie theater is oftentimes tedious, annoying, and thanks to most crappy Hollywood movies, rather unfulfilling.

Nitehawk Cinema might just change all that. They focus on quality films to pair with their chef-driven food menu. That’s right. We came here, believe it or not, to get a list item from Time Out’s 100 Best. This is a relatively new movie theater in Williamsburg (hipster-central) where you get a menu before the movie starts, waiters come and take your order, and it’s not rude to chomp into a huge burger during the most climactic moment.

The menu is curated by chef Saul Bolton and it features gourmet takes on movie theater/bar food. The popcorn has lime, cotija cheese, and cilantro, nachos are served with Mexican-style queso, there are fish tacos, burgers, and even raw kale salads. I know one of Time Out’s food writers is a huge fan of nachos and so we were compelled to order the Nitehawk Queso.

The food didn’t arrive until the movie began and so my photos are rather dark, for fear of people thinking I was trying to pirate the film. And I wonder how different things would taste if I could actually see what I was eating (the supposedly horrible Dans Le Noir restaurant in Midtown poses those questions). In the dark during the movie, the food was rather disappointing.

The aforementioned popcorn was slightly stale and none of the flavors popped (pun intended), the kale salad was a bit messy and never quite came together, and the queso (which was probably the best of the bunch) was just not my thing.

According to the menu, black beans, guacamole, and chorizo were mixed into the Veleveeta cheese. I couldn’t see them because of the darkness and so I have to take the menu’s word for it. Furthermore, none of those flavors revealed themselves on the fresh tortilla chips. It just tasted salty and cheesy, with a hint of spice. Which I suppose is all you might want during a movie. But I’ve never been a fan of this junky cheese to begin with and this update didn’t help matters.

I will say when the lights came back up, most of the cheesy goop was gone. So it couldn’t have been that bad.

On the plus side, the movie we chose was quite good. Moonrise Kingdom might be my favorite Wes Anderson movie. I generally find his films all style with very little emotional pay-off. This one had heart and character, while still holding true to his unique and exciting visual storytelling. See. I could write movie reviews!

Would Nitehawk Cinema’s Nitehawk Queso make my Top 100 of the year? Definitely not since it was muddied and junky, good only for stoner food. It gets a 5 out of 10, but the movie theater experience here would rate much higher, if I was reviewing movie theaters.