An Evening at BAM – Café, Prix Fixe,
Film

After a lengthy closure, BAM Café (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) is once again open.

For those of you who have not visited this lofty dining room, you are missing out on one of Brooklyn's best kept secrets.Roomy, elegantly modern and existing solely to enhance the experience of those who love the arts of music and film, the BAM Café is a great venue for an urban dinner & a movie .

The 21$ prix fixe offers standard fare – we had Caesar salad appetizers, short ribs served with spinach and mashed potatoes, a glass of pinot noir and a generous slice of Junior’s cheese cake.But for 21US Dollars each, we were able to sit in an elegant room, have a lovely meal and listen as talented local musicians played contemporary classical music.` And after dinner, we went on to see the kind of film that mainstream theaters won’t bother to show.

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The service was a bit strange; the hostess marched us all the way around the perimeter to a table near the musicians, and later a parade of servers and food runners and cocktail waitresses delivered one item at time to our table, on separate trays.I got the feeling that these young people were in training, or that we were part of a larger anthropological experiment. But the food was decent, as was the wine, and the music was relaxing. In fact, the music here can be excellent, and it is worth visiting the website to see who is playing.

http://www.bam.org/

After dinner, we returned to one of the lower of the levels to see the film “Thank You for Smoking”, a snide satire that felt like a cross between Scorsese’s “Good Fellas”and Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers” – without the gore or Bill Murray. If you haven’t seen this film, go now. And have the prix fixe dinner. Or just go and listen to the live music, have a drink and enjoy the space .

Don’t limit yourself to Netflix .