13 May 2026

Put down that halloumi! The cinema is not a restaurant

This week, Silver Spoon is off to da movies!

Photo by Gerry Brakus

Every now and then an enterprising editor will put a journalist on assignment out of their comfort zone. What if the mild-mannered culture critic were to turn their lexicographical microscope on to a fraught and febrile inner-city protest? Or perhaps something new might bloom if the cynical Westminster sleuth tested themselves in a foreign warzone. Flak jacket ahoy, and all that. Apply a niche skillset to a different set of problems, and maybe the peril and the stress will inspire a fresh perceptive, a new insight – access to something higher. Anyway, this week Silver Spoon is off to da movies!

“Journalism fucking matters,” one character protests at the beginning of The Devil Wears Prada 2. “Hell yeah!” I think as I sit alone in screen one at the Everyman in Belsize Park at 2pm on a weekday. I am here to inspect the spate of “luxury” cinema chains slowly colonising this island. Goodbye sticky carpets, pungent and artificially buttered popcorn, flip-up seats and lurid orange cheese. Water-y Fanta and germ-riddled, stale pick ’n’ mix – you are not long for this world. Let’s raise a middle finger to the Odeon, altogether now.

With its full menu, wine list, table (seat?) service and air of chin-stroking self-regard, the Everyman answers a question no one ever asked. It poses a solution to a problem that never existed. What if the cinema also served burgers?

News flash, bozos. There is a reason for the century-long separation between church and state. Let’s start with the obvious. Restaurants? Loud, mood-lit. Cinemas? Silent, pitch black. Restaurants? Social. Cinemas? You try striking up a lively conversation about the weather while Jessie Buckley over-emotes and see how many friends you win. Don’t make me tap the “time and place sign” – but there really is a time and a place for “truffle artichoke dip and flatbread” or Provençal rosé, and it’s not while Paul Mescal performs his “depressed person” stare down the lens. The effect is rather like suggesting a squash court could simultaneously perform the function of a library.

Or perhaps it is like asking the food columnist to do film criticism. As someone new to movies, I would like to know: do all filmmakers have MFAs in exposition these days? Or just the people behind The Devil Wears Prada 2? Because at least one writer in that room attended the “Oh no! If we don’t make this aeroplane then the deal is ruined!” school of dialogue. The film is good, I think? For fans of “pacy montage” at least. This is easy – Mark Kermode, I hear you squirming. As you should, son.

I inspect the menu further. Doughballs (hauled in, I suspect, from the Pizza Express across the road); “plant-based sun-dried tomato flatbread” (close runner-up to “for sale, baby shoes, never worn” in the saddest short-story contest); a passion fruit martini or cherry amaretto sour; “hot honey halloumi” (who is eating grilled cheese with their bare hands in here? Stop, please.) One woman orders a “fennel, salami and red pepper” pizza; another drinks a glass of what is posing as champagne but I know is Prosecco. You could order another cocktail from the 13-strong list. But I suspect sipping an Aperol spritz in dark silence would be as psychologically incongruous as “firing up” the “barbie” in Vladivostok.

I’m not minded to turn my nose up at needless expense – much to my personal detriment. And the Everyman welcomes me in and says, “You bet, Finn, you bet.” At some point in the past decade a clever-clogs at McKinsey worked out you could charge £17.50 for a weekday matinee ticket and still they would come.

It’s not the money but the food that triggers a deep reactionary impulse within me. In the spirit of “journalism fucking matters” (thank you, Anne Hathaway) I order anyway. Green tea, though I receive mint. And some insipid, floppy flatbread.

I will say that everything else about the Everyman is lovely: comfortable, clean, punctual, friendly, quiet, you know – all those other words you would want to use to describe a trip to the movies. Unfortunately, the conceit has led me somewhere I don’t want to be: alone, eating hummus in the cinema on Thursday afternoon, like some sort of pervert.

[Further reading: Beer and sandwiches: At the Granta, Cambridge]