Review: Alamo Drafthouse
June 28, 2008
The Alamo Drafthouse Village has some great options for vegetarians. There’s salads, bean burgers, hummus, mexican, pizza, mac n’ cheese, fried goodies, plus a variety of drinks and desserts, all of which you can get while enjoying a film of your choice. (View Menu )
We’ve been here dozens of times, and I can tell you that the food can be divine one day and worthless the next. Consistency is an issue here.
On one visit, I tried the goat-cheese salad with panko-crusted goat cheese rounds, dried cherries and pine nuts. It was very good, and the warmed goat cheese was a welcome and filling topping. However, on a subsequent visit, the same dish was soaked in dressing and nearly impossible to eat. (One facet of the dining while watching a movie twist, is that you can’t really talk to your server about food issues, unless you want to miss part of the movie or disturb those around you).
The same can be said for the Green Chili Mac n Cheese, which is blended with Jack, American and Manchego cheeses and topped with bread crumbs. I’ve had this dish three times, the first time it was delightfully creamy and cheesy, with just the right about of crispy topping. The second time, the topping was too thick, causing the crumbs to absorb all that creamy cheese and making the dish very dry. The third time was somewhere in between.
In fact, the only consistent dish I’ve ever had at the Alamo is the pizza. Both the “Moonstruck” cheese pizza and the “Wild at Artichoke Hearts” with goat cheese are delicious and have the added bonus of being easy to eat in the dark.
Also recommended are the milkshakes (except the Guinness one) and the fine beer list (although they recently removed my personal favorite, Paulaner Hefeweizen.
All in all, the Alamo offers far better meals than any other movie theater and plenty of “regular” restaurants, to boot. Although the meals can vary in quality, it’s still a novel and fun experience every time.
Vegan Friendly: **
Vegetarian Friendly: ****
Fish Friendly: no fish here
Price: $$
Service: ***
Atmosphere: ****
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
2700 W. Anderson Lane
Austin, TX 78757
2 Responses to “Review: Alamo Drafthouse”
We have been vegan for years now and this is one of our favorite “restaurants” (on the few days we go out to eat we look at Drafthouses showtimes first)!!! =) We used to go to the Original/Ritz…then the Village opened and it became our go-to…then Lakecreek came and it is “ours” now! As far as the food being perfect one day and nowhere as good the next time…this is a far bigger problem at the Village imho…it has NOT happened to our food in at least 2 years…it has been consistently great food! But if you run into this problem at any Drafthouse (like lukewarm fries for example)…simply write your complaint/problem on one of the pieces of paper and stick it up in front of you…and your server will read it and take the food back to the kitchen and fix it!!! (We have done this…it absolutely works!!!)
By Veganmarsi on Jan 11, 2009
Also…for all you vegans out there…their veggie burger patty has cheese in it…we came in early once and asked the kitchen and they actually showed us the gardenburger package and we got to read the ingredients!
They make a mean vegan custom pizza though!!! Btw they do not mind you bringing in your own vegan Parmesan or mayo or anything!
By Veganmarsi on Jan 11, 2009