Indulge In A Horrific ‘Midsommar’ Film Feast

For cinephiles, foodies, and cinephile-foodies, Nitehawk’s Film Feasts are a kind of heaven. Cooked up in collaboration with local food purveyors, breweries, wineries, and cocktail specialists, they’re screenings of great movies along with multi-course food and drink menus imaginatively inspired by, and synced to, the movies themselves.

Earlier this year, Nitehawk Cinemas Williamsburg presented a screening of Studio Ghibli’s magical animated classic “Spirited Away.” The menu included a refreshing cocktail that resembled Chihiro’s striped shirt, with sake, Bols Genever, matcha, strawberry, and rice milk.

Later this month, Nitehawk Cinemas Prospect Park will present a screening of Ari Aster’s folk horror flick “Midsommar,” starring Florence Pugh. (No spoilers, but its climactic cocktail, The Yew Tree, combines sap, stone pine, douglas fir, smoke, and apple.)

Members of the Nitehawk team told Forbes about combining the culinary and the cinematic.

How does the Nitehawk Cinema team decide what movies will make a good fit for a Film Feast?

John Woods, Director of Programming: Since the beginning of Nitehawk we’ve always gotten a lot out of doing Film Feasts. It’s a fully collaborative effort where our bar, kitchen, and cinema department have an opportunity to work together.

We have a list of potential films we’ve kept for years that we’re always adding to. Sometimes someone has a eureka moment in choosing a film or it grows out of a conversation. Once we decide on a film we watch it together and individually write down ideas and make a note of scene times or dialogue that inspire food or drink courses. This could range from scenes directly in the movie, a location the movie is being shot into using dialogue. We all sit together after and go over everything and that’s how it develops.

The fact that what each department does is so different really adds a lot to where we wind up with the menu since we’re all looking at it from our own perspective while having our creativity informed from a different source.

If we have a food or liquor partner that’s enthusiastic it really gets fun. Working with people from outside the theater who have a completely different approach but share our love of film, food, and drinks is why Film Feasts at Nitehawk continue to be a special event for all of us.

Could you tell us about a couple of noteworthy Film Feast menu items from past events?

Nick Dodge, Beverage Director: I love these events because it gives a chance to get really conceptual with our menus. I think the items that are most successful are the ones that really evoke the spirit of the scenes they are inspired by.

A few of my favorite dishes of mine that we’ve done are:

During “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” when they are having the palace feast we served an “Eyeball Soup” cocktail in a gold bowl with floating eyeballs along with “Chilled Monkey Brains” (glazed sweetbreads w coconut rice noodles).

In “Super Troopers” we served a maple syrup cocktail in little syrup bottles during the syrup chugging scene — “I am all that is man!” — bacon fat washed Whistlepig Small Batch Rye, Whistlepig maple syrup, lemon, orange maple bitters.

When the main character slices his tongue off in “Oldboy,” we served thinly-sliced, grilled beef tongue with a streak of blood red omija sauce.

In “Dazed and Confused,” we served taquitos that were made to look like a really big joint — “Low Rider” phyllo dough rolled carne asada taquitos, Takis dust, cotija crumble, avocado crema

In “Blade Runner,” we worked with Impossible meat to make a menu of “replicant” meat dishes. The Impossible beef tartare was particularly good.

You presented a Film Feast screening of “Spirited Away” earlier in the year?

Stewart Gary, Culinary Director: When choosing “Spirited Away,” we knew we had a movie rife with food at its core. From the very start of the film we are thrown into a world with overfilling bowls of colorful and imaginative dishes. Hardly five minutes go by without another plate of food passing by the screen.

The food and drinks are our interpretations of what we see. One of the most difficult parts of the movie to bring to the plate was to show the abundance of what is on display while creating a reasonable tasting menu for a guest to enjoy in the limited runtime. As always, we try to bring the same imagination to the dishes that the filmmakers brought to each scene.