Dinner and a show: The Prague cinemas turning film night into a full sensory experience

Going to the cinema has always involved food of some kind, but in Prague, a couple of inventive concepts are pushing that relationship a lot further than a bag of popcorn.

At the new Taste Story pop-up, organized by Sunset Cinema, food-focused films are screened while the dishes appearing on screen are served to the audience in real time. Meanwhile at Kino Balt in Žižkov, depending on which of their formats you choose, you might be watching one of the worst films ever made while working through four Caribbean rum tastings, or sitting down to a tasting menu paired with Django Unchained.

Bringing cinema and gastronomy together is a trend that has been gaining traction around the world. In London, multi-course menus are being paired with screenings of films like Willy Wonka and Clueless, while Mamma Mia! The Party, an ABBA-themed theatrical dining experience, consistently sells out. Prague, it turns out, is not far behind.

The team that has brought immersive screening series to Prague is behind Taste Story; pop-up screenings of food-focused films. The debut run screened Disney's Ratatouille across five evenings in mid-February at the Spojka event space in Karlín and sold out within days. Guests arrived to candlelit tables dressed with thematic décor, French music, and a printed menu—a six-course affair that moved from appetiser to dessert in sync with the film, with a timer appearing in the corner of the screen to signal each course.

"From the beginning, we never just wanted to screen films—we wanted to create a complete cinematic experience where every detail matters," founder Vladyslav Cherevatyi told Czech Crunch. "With Taste Story, our goal was for the audience not just to watch the story, but to taste it."

The next round of screenings from March 9–12 at Spojka Karlín have already sold out, but a waiting list for priority access is open via their Instagram for future screenings.

Kino Balt, a small independent cinema on Blahníkova in Prague 3, has quietly built three distinct food-and-film formats under the same roof. The most irreverent is Rum Cinema, which operates on a deliberately contrary principle: the worse the film, the better the evening. Every ticket includes four Caribbean rum tastings alongside tapas and unlimited water, with non-drinkers welcome to swap for wine or beer. One upcoming screening is cult classic Tommy Wiseau's The Room, widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made.

A step up in seriousness is Cocktail Cinema, which pairs thematically appropriate rum cocktails and tapas with the film on screen. For a coming screening of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, guests will receive three rum cocktails timed throughout the film.

The third format is Experience Cinema, a collaboration with the TamarindTree restaurant in which themed dishes are cooked fresh for each screening and paired with drinks from the cinema's bar. Each event has a unique menu that will never be repeated. Upcoming screenings include Forrest Gump (themed cocktails and three types of shrimp), Chocolat (wine or rum with three tasting dishes across savoury, sweet, and "weird"), and Django Unchained (Kubík wine and three tasting dishes).

Together, the two venues point to a growing appetite for nights out that refuse to treat the film and the food as separate events. Whether you want a candlelit six-course meal synced to an animated masterpiece, or a rum flight and a gloriously terrible blockbuster, the city is increasingly happy to oblige.