Chicago gets its first Alamo Drafthouse

The vibes are immaculate, joked one of my friends as we walked into the new Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Wrigleyville, which opened a few weeks ago. I’d been to only one other location, which had been retrofitted inside the over 100-year-old Mission Theatre in San Francisco. Those vibes weren’t so immaculate; the Mission is an old theater, so no amount of restoration can make it shine like a new penny. But I liked that, so I’d had a relatively good impression of the fabled movie theater chain.

The first Alamo Drafthouse opened in 1997 in Austin, Texas. Since then the company has grown profusely, with 39 locations nationwide. The lore around the chain centered on its vaguely nontraditional programming; the extensive food and beverage menus; limited-edition movie posters; and—most famously or infamously, depending on what kind of movie watcher you are—their draconian rules around theater etiquette.

In 2011, Tim League, the theater’s cofounder, former CEO, and now executive chairman, received an irate voicemail from a customer who’d been kicked out for texting. The company then began using it as a pre-show advisory commercial and uploaded the bit to YouTube, where the customer’s Karen-esque rant promptly went viral. Some of the Alamo’s other conditions are not allowing infants or small children (except at special kid-friendly screenings), requiring that guests under 18 be accompanied by an adult, and not showing advertisements before movies. 

Going into this new Alamo Drafthouse in Wrigleyville (its location either an attraction or a deterrent, again depending on what kind of moviegoer you are), I felt neutral in terms of what to expect. Some things I’d experienced or heard about in the past had been good, but some others, like the absence of celluloid projection at this particular location and early suggestions of overly nostalgic programming, had me wondering.  

There’s little to discern that the theater is where it actually is, with no marquee or obvious signage to denote its presence. It’s on the third floor of the building, right above a UFC Gym. (Should you want to violently debate someone about whatever film you just saw, I imagine that’d be the place to do it.) When the elevator doors open, one immediately gets a holistic view of the theater’s offerings, from the bar and seating area to Video Vortex, an in-house video rental store (more on that later).

The pièce de résistance of the theater’s decor is a to-scale model of the backside of the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder that crashes out a window in John Hughes’s 1986 comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, complete with the NRVOUS license plate and fake shards of glass hanging from the ceiling that appear to be flying out amidst the wreckage. It’s impressive but also kitschy, and unapologetically so. (Below it on the floor is a decal that quotes Ferris’s famous line: “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”) It’s also a testament to the impersonal, “Instagrammable” branding style that’s come to dominate social media in recent years, existing to be propagated into the ether.

Video Vortex, the video rental inside the theater, is modest, though it apparently contains more than 10,000 Blu-rays, DVDs, and even VHS tapes that people can rent—for free. Listen, something being free is never a bad thing. Something being free often allows it to be accessible, which is a net-positive in the grand scheme of things. Still, it’s lamentable that stores like Odd Obsession Movies have been forced to close in recent years, while the same business model is being used essentially as a gimmick by a corporate chain. (Thankfully, FACETS’s video rental store soldiers on.) To give a little more credit where it’s due, Video Vortex also rents out DVD and VHS players for a small fee, so those without this sadly outmoded technology can enjoy the thrill of physical media.

An installation made of old-school television sets, reminiscent of a Nam June Paik sculpture, adorns the eating area, where the tables are topped with vintage B movie lobby cards. Decorations in the style of VHS labels—Comedy! Drama! Adult! 3-Day Rental! Be Kind Please Rewind!—cover the walls. The bar next to it boasts a full menu, complete with movie-themed cocktails. A good theme is my Achilles’ heel, so I couldn’t help but to admire the list: Y Tú Margarita También; Third-Rate Vaudevillians, a rye-based cocktail for the 1936 W.C. Fields film The Old Fashioned Way; and the classic mint julep and Mississippi punch for Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby and  Blake Edwards’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, respectively. I opted for the Tokyo Drifter, named after Seijun Suzuki’s 1966 film. Mixed with whiskey and bourbon, it was pretty damn good. There are other libations, of course, craft beer initially being a thing for which the Alamo Drafthouse was known. But like much else with the theater chain, they seemed to have moved past the homier stalwarts into fancier fare.

Like with the food. The concept of eating an actual meal at a movie theater is no longer the novelty it once was, with several AMC Dine-In theaters dominating the concept in and around the Chicagoland area. The Alamo Drafthouse follows the same idea, with moviegoers (or is it diners?) being able to order complete meals from their seats by writing one’s order down on a slip of paper and remotely signaling a waiter (apparently “ninja-trained,” as they don all black and crouch down low so as not to impede anyone’s view of the movie), who then takes the paper and returns summarily with food and drink. 

Alamo Drafthouse Wrigleyville$11.99-$14.99, discounts available for kids, students, seniors, military, police, fire, EMS, and guests with disabilities3519 N. Clark, Suite C301872-298-3961

I wanted to try an array of options, so my friends and I started with the loaded fries and a limited-time menu item, the brussels sprouts pizza. (In addition to such items, the theater also offers special menus themed with certain movies.) Some of the appetizers fall under the nebulous category of being southwestern, and the fries were one of those. Topped with Hatch green chile queso, Tillamook cheddar, cotija, bacon, and sriracha sour cream, among other garnishes, the fries were easily my favorite thing I ate. The pizza was fine, though nothing to write home about and certainly not as substantial as pizza from a regular restaurant. 

I’d done some research beforehand to determine what was popular on their menu, so seeing that moviegoers liked their fried pickles, we selected what seemed like their current corollary, the pickle fries. I like regular fried pickles, so I expected to like them in this unusual variation. Alas, it remains true that you can’t improve upon perfection; the pickle fries exceed the pickle-to-fry ratio that makes the originals so delicious. And the ranch dipping sauce just made them worse, at least to me, as I’m particularly bothered by putting a wet thing (the ranch) on another wet thing (the pickle). Does that make sense? Probably not. Still, did it impede my enjoyment of the pickle fries? Yes, yes it did. 

The hand-breaded chicken tenders were similarly disappointing, with the breading falling off almost immediately. It’d been a while since I’d had chicken tenders served with gravy on the side, so I was looking forward to the Hatch green chile version that accompanied them. It was bland, not adding much to the dish at all. It may be worth noting the ketchup that came on the side of the fries that came with the tenders was the reddest I’d ever seen. 

And what’s a movie without popcorn? Initially we intended to forgo their regular popcorn and try the churro popcorn, which has pieces of churro in it, as well as a blend of cinnamon, sugar, maple, and vanilla, but they were out. So we got the regular bottomless popcorn—the bottomless here being wishful thinking, as we were full from the heavier fare and didn’t even finish it, even with truffle parmesan seasoning.

I’ve come this far and not even revealed what I was seeing. I chose a repertory screening (which the theater offers in addition to newer movies, along with special screenings ranging from sneak peeks to brunches and movie parties, like the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania cosplay screening) of John Hughes’s aforementioned teen classic, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, in part because the theater has been christened the John Hughes Cinema in tribute to the filmmaker who spent several of his formative years growing up in Northbrook and several of whose films are set in and around Chicago. A special plaque at the theater’s entrance, next to the Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder, declares that, in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Hughes “perfectly captured the mischievous and carefree spirit of youth . . . cementing Chicago as a cinematic playground in the process.”

The movie, like much else about the overall experience, was fine. I’d seen it before, but it never resonated with me, even though it’s indisputably a love letter to one of the greatest cities in the world. The experience of seeing it was about as good as seeing any other movie at a multiplex, with big screens, comfortable chairs, and crisp digital projection. I don’t doubt that the folks over at Alamo Drafthouse love cinema and aspire for their Chicago location to become an integral part of the city’s moviegoing fabric. But like Hughes’s movie, it’s a love letter to a different kind of Chicago, one where the vibes are immaculate and the real city—with grit, grime, uncomfortable chairs, and crunchy film stock—is nowhere to be found.

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