CASTLE CINEMA CAFE,

Some eateries have so much ambience that it overshadows the food. Tuxedoed waiters and crumb scrapers, Serengeti decor and wildebeest chops. Or, in the case of Castle Cinema, Sandra Bullock or Robert De Niro on the big screen while you dive into the Buffalo wings or rigatoni Bolognese. When some local entrepreneurs, the Gemma brothers, bought the moribund Castle Cinema on Chalkstone Avenue, they figured the only way a second-run movie theater could make a profit was to feed as well as entertain. So the Castle Cinema Café opened ealier this year in the renovated place, with the kitchen also providing less ambitious fare for those who'd like to eat in the actual theaters. We missed our 5:30 reservation, arriving too late to have dinner in the cafe and catch the 6:30 show of Gosford Park without having Tums instead of mints after the meal. We sure wished they started serving dinner at 5 p.m. The café looked like a pleasant place, with a full bar in a sunny space and a completely separate room to provide a meaningful non-smoking area. The menu there warrants the sort of attention that doesn't deserve distraction from car chases and explosions -- fancy appetizers, osso buco, and the like. The most expensive entrées are lobster saltimbocca and porterhouse steak, $20 each. Although you can blow $145 on a bottle of Dom if a James Bond retrospective triggers your expansive impulses.

Full review.