Brooklynites won’t have to travel far to mess with Texas when the Alamo Drafthouse — Austin’s legendary dinner-and-a-movie joint — opens an outpost on the Fulton Mall.
The restaurant and cinema will be a part of the long-planned City Point mega-development, which includes retail, offices, housing, and what could be the borough’s tallest building. The seven-screen theater will start showing movies in 2015, the same year a Century 21 department store is slated to open its doors in the complex.
The Texan cinema titans say they can’t wait to bring their th-eatery to the borough.
“I am extremely excited about the major development in downtown Brooklyn and proud to be a part of it,” said Alamo Drafthouse founder and CEO Tim League. “Although more than two years on the horizon, I can tell you that the City Point Brooklyn Alamo will be our best theater yet.”
The Alamo pioneered the growing movie-house trend of offering sit-down meals and alcoholic beverages when it brought cabaret-style tables and second-run pictures to the hipster capital of the southwest in 1997.
Patrons order food and beverages by writing their orders on slips, which waiters pick up during the movie.
Over the past 15 years, the Alamo has grown to screen indies and blockbusters alike in six locations in Austin, as well as theaters throughout the country, in cities including San Francisco, Denver, and Kansas City, Mo.
The cinema chain — which is planning outposts in Manhattan’s Upper West Side and in Yonkers — has also gained notoriety for its refusal to play trailers or other commercials and its zero-tolerance policy toward talking and texting.
It won’t be the first place in Brooklyn that combines the silver platter and the silver screen.
The Nitehawk Cinema, which opened in Williamsburg last year, also offers dinner and beverages served by waiters during films. That theater shows first-run, indie, and midnight movies, and plays experimental films before each showing.