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London's best cinema food
Find out which London cinemas offer the best food in our exclusive survey
The Time Out film team doing their bit for queen and country - Rob Grieg
It's not hard to summon up an image of the worst of our city’s overpriced multiplex snacks: limp hot dogs, soggy nachos and buckets of fizzy brown liquid. But something has changed. Choose the right cinema and you can face a choice of food and drink ranging from white-chocolate-coated raspberries to beer from Namibia. We had to know more.
Where’s the best beer and wine? Where’s the tastiest cake? And where, should you wish, will you find honey-and-fennel-flavoured nuts? We trawled the city. We ate fancy sausage rolls. We tried wine. We spat hot dogs into bins. All for you, dear reader, so you never have to experience the horror of one cinema’s nachos and cheese sauce, which one of the team thought was 'like cardboard and hot semen'.
Cinema food round up
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The best cinema food in London
Of all London's non-multiplexes, where does the most imaginative and best value food? We're not just talking popcorn here...
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The multiplex round-up
Whose hot dogs are hottest? Whose nachos should you nibble? Find out which of the big chain cinemas serve up the best grub.
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Food in the cinema: the gallery
Four Time Out film critics went around London's cinemas. They ate food, they took pictures - with hilarious consequences!
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Cinema food: a nutritionist weighs in
Nutritionist Zerlina Mastin gives us the lowdown on mainstream cinema food – and it ain’t pretty…
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My year selling nachos
A tale of one glorious year selling snacks at a cinema in Hammersmith, by Tom Huddleston
Comments
You've missed one of the best Cinemas in London. Aubin Cinema in Shoreditch. Check it out. It's fantastic on every level!
The thing about the Rio in Dalston Helen, is there's always a couple of dotty poeple (well... women, to be honest) having a chat at the back. I don't if it's always the same women, but it's happened everytime I've been there!
I'm sure it's not you though ;)
Worst - Cineworld = Overpriced unhealthy rubbish
Best = Rio Cinema in Dalston (107 Kingsland High Street E8). Proper coffee, wine & beers, crisps and al that but also homemade cakes!
Couldn't agree more. Recently sat next to a group drinking copious amounts of wine and getting up every five minutes to top up supplies or go for a pee. Before or after the film guys!
In addition to the excellent BFI, I recommend the recently renovated Cine Lumiere (closed in Aug), where you can see French films in a crunch, crackle and slurp free environment....and few ads to speak of either. Heaven!
I totally agree with that Jim !
I have had to tell people to shut up many a time,stop rustling bags and pour their sweets into their hands like adults etc,etc,etc
I rarely go to the cinema anymore.
The NFT (BFI now) is one of the only places where people listen and love film, also worth mentioning they don't sell popcorn or any of that other crap!
I sit in absolute silence out of respect for others and they should do the same.
The title of this feature is an oxymoron.
Cinemas today are full of mouth-breathers, rustling plastic bags and munching pop-corn with their cake-holes agape.
Even Michael Bay films can't drown out these anti-social self-satisfiers.
Cinemas are hallowed ground, and should be experienced in monastic silence.
I tried to watch Inception (Insipid) last week at Vue Islington... it was like a chimp's tea-party.
If I was in the picture at the top, I'd be the scowling Calhoun on the left, but with a double espresso.
Don't promote this behaviour Time Out, for gawd sake!
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