Font ResizeThe kitchen is open.
It has taken a while, but El Cerrito Speakeasy's movie meal menu is back under the new Rialto management. Beer and wine are coming attractions.
Renamed Rialto Cinemas Cerrito, the city-owned movie house has opened its full kitchen about five months after Rialto Cinemas took it over in July.
The offerings, predictably, comprise "food you can eat in the dark," quipped Melissa Hatheway, Rialto Cinemas marketing director.
The city bought the theater, built in 1937 and closed in the early 1960s, in 2001 to save and renovate it. With its Art Deco exterior and interior refurbished, it opened in November, 2006 as the El Cerrito Speakeasy, showing "Casablanca" in a gala opening.
Its distinctive new touch: instead of the usual auditorium seating, capacity was reduced to seat movie watchers at tables and counters. They would order kitchen-prepared food on the way in, and it was served to their seats during the film.
The Speakeasy managers closed it in June 2009, unable to meet their financial obligations. The city lost no time contracting with Rialto, which reopened it July 15. Refreshments consisted of snacks, however, while the kitchen service was retooled.
"We had it closed while we worked out the workflow," said chief financial officer Michael O'Rand.
"On Nov. 30 it had a 'soft' opening, and we had films that weren't blockbusters. It took two weeks to get the kitchen systems in place."
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The system can handle as many as 40 orders at once, and seven people comprise the kitchen staff. Kitchen staff on duty ranges from two for a Monday matinee to five on a blockbuster Saturday night. A busy night keeps three people busy preparing food and two delivering it, scouting in the dark for order numbers on the tables.
The kitchen reopened last week, just in time for a showing of "Michael Jacksons's This Is It.," The staff has served up to 250 orders in a single evening.
The kitchen is open for every showing, and the "food you can eat in the dark" looks much like the former menu: Pizza, sandwiches, salads, appetizers and desserts. But it always is a work in progress, responding to patron preferences, managers say.
In the works is build-your-own pizza, where the customer can choose from a variety of toppings. In addition, "we will have vegan pizza," boasted kitchen manager Kyle Parks.
Alcoholic beverages await a permit from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, but once it arrives, a walk-in cooler already is in place.
"Patrons are on tenterhooks for beer and wine," Hatheway said, since they were a staple back in the Speakeasy "old days." The snack bar has a tap for eight kinds of beer, and wine will be served there, too.
Early next year Rialto plans to open a separate wine bar, Scene, on one side of the lobby, with a 25-seat screening room for niche films on the other side.
O'Rand is pleased with the attendance numbers. He attributed part of it to a change in policy to bring in films during peak demand rather than waiting, as the previous managers did. Opening with "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "We opened really strong," he recalled.
"We had a little lull, but with the Michael Jackson film and 'Where the Wild Things Are,' we're quite encouraged. The numbers are there toward our goal."
And with the parade of pending additions, the numbers promise to keep getting better.
