Dining in the dark at River Oaks’ iPic theater
Denzel Washington had just barged into the saloon looking for trouble when the spicy tuna arrived.
It was dark in the iPic theater in the flossy new River Oaks District, and the table attached to my $26-a-pop leather recliner wasn’t big enough to handle all of our snacks and drinks. Our waiter fumbled and mumbled in the dark, making room for the ham-and-cheese biscuits and the Caesar salad (no chicken!) among the cocktails and water glasses. I did not envy his job. “Key plot point!” I hissed to my companion despairingly when the waiter had departed, Denzel having shot up the saloon during the interval, in a manner and for reasons we might never comprehend.
Fortunately, the remake of “The Magnificent Seven” we were there
to see was not a work of subtlety and nuance, so the interruption proved minor. But after three visits to the resolutely swank iPic, where everybody with 26 bucks can be a VIP for a few hours, I’m still not sure I want to eat dinner in the dark while I’m watching a movie.
iPic makes it as undemanding as possible, mostly, with a menu that focuses on easy-tomaneuver finger food of the sort you might find at your better grade of corporate cocktail party.
Sherry Yard, the prominent Los Angeles chef who consulted on the menu, has done a respectable job coming up with crowd-pleasers long on the carbs and sugars we 21st-century Americans crave. Pizza, sliders, sandwiches, croquettes, wraps, fried items, that sort of thing — even a creation called “naan-chos” involving red pepper hummus, smoked Gouda and the lately fashionable “sweet pea guacamole.”
Pea guacamole is a curious choice for iPic’s Houston location, where that particular fad is considered sacrilege. But I digress.
I expected little from the whole food-deliveredto-your-luxury-movieseat concept, but iPic’s fare turned out to be better than it has to be. Theater-goers can sample the menu in three ways. Buy a $26 “VIP” ticket, and waitstaff will deliver food and drinks to your seat before and during the movie.
A $16 ticket for a nonreclining seat in the first two rows — iPic’s version of steerage, separated by a wall from the more expensive seats that fill the rest of each small theater — allows you to order from a more closely edited menu at the theater’s version of a snack bar, where you’ll be given a buzzer that vibrates when your food is ready.
Guests at either ticket level can dine and drink before or after the movie at the Tuck Room, an attached “gastro-lounge” (their term, not mine) that offers a wider menu with a more made-to-order focus. “This cocktaildriven menu will showcase a progressive menu of small indulgent bites as well as shareable social plates,” as iPic’s gruesome PR prose puts it. Like all the public spaces at the moody, sepia-toned theater complex, the restaurant-bar resembles an upscale hotel, with dedicated art, subtle glints and glitter, and fauxresidential artifacts-bythe-yard.
The in-seat cinema service is the main attraction, though. It’s that service element that reinforces the whole firstclass-air-travel vibe iPic is selling with its VIP seats. Can’t afford top tariff to Europe? Sink into one of our big, cushy, leatherlook recliners. They’re arranged two by two, enclosed by textured pods that even mimic the look of a first-class cabin.
A rolled blanket and a pillow awaits in these svelte little shrines, along with gadgetry that includes a button to call for service (“It’s our bat signal,” a charming waiter told me cheerfully) and more buttons to raise and lower footrest and seat back. Like the pods in first-class cabins, they’re ready to be fetishized on Instagram.
Champagne, madam? Why yes, a glass of PiperHeidsieck Brut will go nicely with my lobster roll. Said roll, at $18, was one of the more agreeable dishes I sampled during my three visits. The poached lobster involved was suitably tender and dewy, and there was plenty of it clasped in its buttery toasted roll.
I couldn’t see the pink chili sauce binding through the murk, and the seasoning was a little saltier than I would have liked, masking the lobster’s natural sweetness (especially in tandem with the Old-Bayspiked potato chips on the side). Not great, but certainly good, pressing the “luxury” button in my brain. I’d order it again. Maybe with a super-indulgent bottle of Piper-Heidsieck stuck in a silvery ice bucket, if I were really trying to impress somebody. (Not for nothing does iPic advertise itself as “the ultimate date night.” Figure $52 for tickets, then anywhere from $50 to $100 plus tip for food and drink for two.)
I also rather liked a $20 trio of beef filet sliders, especially since I got to specify I wanted these little steak sandwiches medium rare. Caramelized onion, arugula and blue cheese made it all click. I spent too much on a $25 glass of Barbaresco because I wasn’t keen on the other red-wine choices, but it was served at coolish cellar temperature and did its job.
So, on another occasion, did a less costly glass of sprightly Vermentino that I’d order again. Perhaps along with the clever finger-food version of Caesar salad our waiter offered to get us, when my greens-seeking companion said she didn’t want the chicken that ordinarily comes with it. We ended up with a plate of crisp inner romaine leaves to dunk into a little tub of energetic Caesar dressing. Just the kind of clean, crunchy green interlude for which a popfood-culture menu like this cries out.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the square-cut ham and cheese biscuits, however. I had envisioned sliderlike mini sandwiches, but smoky Black Forest ham cubes and chunks of cheddar had been baked right into the biscuit dough, so carbs beat out proteins by a mile. The maple butter that came with the biscuits made a necessary contrast.
I had to laugh at a $14 plate of “loaded tater tots” that looked like some spectral Rochester Garbage Plate in the gloom, lacking only the macaroni salad for authenticity. I’m not a tater tot person, but I had to admit these crunchy bullets were quite fetching beneath their blanket of cheese, bacon crumbles and red chile circles. But it was strange to eat them there in the dark — while trying to track the ins and outs of “Snowden,” no less — never knowing exactly where to stab or what the next mystery bite might bring.
That spicy tuna snack that came between me and Denzel’s first shootout? Tons of fun. I really liked the tuna’s satiny texture, its hot/sweet red chili sauce and its platform of crackly crisped rice rectangles. The mellow rice and the savor of the fish balanced out the sweetness from which I would normally shy away. Like all the plates here, there was plenty for two people to share.
Indeed, it is better to under-order at iPic, as I discovered during the great “Magnificent Seven” shuffle. You can just press the bat-signal button if you want more.
The vaunted craft cocktails mostly seem too sweet to be as sophisticated as they think they are. An Old Fashioned variant and a mojito/piña colada mashup both seemed out of balance, although at the Tuck Room bar, I was able to procure a shaker Mezcal margarita with sweetener omitted, which did the trick. I ordered it straight up. It came on the rocks, although I was one of two people at the bar on that midafternoon.
When I complained that my first glass of Piper-Heidsieck was flat, however, the employee running the takeaway snack bar promptly fetched a fresh bottle from the bar and opened it for me. That was typical of the niceness and the welcoming attitude I found among the young staff on every visit. The theater waitstaff earned my particular admiration. They do their job in the dark, in whispers, and that ain’t easy. I tipped accordingly when my bill came toward the end of the movie.
So would I return? I might, if there were a first-run movie I was dying to see and I felt like treating myself. But I love going to the movies alone, and iPic is very much not made for this, what with those intimate two-person pods I would not care to share with a stranger.
The $16 front-row singles are an option, with food and drink transported by yours truly, but who really wants to make their way past the first-class cabin to your pathetic economy seat? Not me, especially when said seat is too close to the screen, anyway. But if part of your moviegoing pleasure is to take part in a communal experience, the front rows are your way to go.
On my very last visit, I figured out where to sit when and if I order myself a movie seat online, using iPic’s diagrammed seat selector, which works just like the ones most airlines use. The very back row of recliners is pod-free, so that it resembles an ordinary movie row writ large.
That’s where you’ll find me at iPic, lobster roll in hand, queen for an hour.