My Friday Night - Movie and a Dinner

My girlfriend and I went out last night with 2 of our friends. We went to see a movie and then to dinner afterwards. Here are my short reviews.

The film was "Thank you for Smoking". Right off the bat, I highly reccomend this movie. It's a comedy type film with a message. The polot is simple: we spend some time with the head lobbiest for the tobacco industry. Even though the film is clearly anti-smoking, we can't help but love the guy and respect how amazing a spokesman he is. The film is at times seriously hillarious and the main character is just perfectly played by Aaron Eckhart. If you are planning on going to the movies this weekend, go see "An Inconvenient Truth". If you've seen that and want to laugh, go see "Thank You for Smoking". Now if only I could convince all the sheep who are going to see the new Sandler film (which I can only assume will suck).

Since we were going to be at the Ritz 5 for the film, we wanted to eat somewhere nearby. There are so many cool places in Old City and we considered our favorite (Buddakan) but instead made reservations at Amada since we wanted to give it a shot and had heard such great things about it from Craig LeBan and others.

My gf and I had gone there once for appetizers to check it out and while she liked it quite a bit, I was totally unimpressed. This time we were doing it right. We had a 10pm reservation and were set up right in front of the stage where they do a set of Flamenco dancing.

We sat down just as the music was starting and boy was it loud. We couldn't hear anything but the music. Not each other, not the waitor, nothing. We considered leaving but we figued it wouldn't last all night. We were right. The set lasted about 20 minutes and then they just up and left. Not that I was complaining, but it was kind of odd that the would set up and play just one simple 20 minute set. I mean, there was a stage and it was a draw of the place.. but anyway.. ce la vi..

I'm not going to go into the food in detail. It's a tapas place and we ordered all kinds of stuff. Some stuff was pretty good, some was boring, and some was bland. Between the 4 of us, we weren't very impressed with me impressed the least. My rating was based on the fact that our per person check (with tip) ended up being over $75 per person. That's cool, but for that kind of money I want great food and great drinks. I had neither. So, after 2 visits to Amada, I give it a rating of C+.