When I got a walk-through of the New Mission Theater earlier this week, it looked like a construction zone by way of the Vatican. In preparation for the Alamo  Drafthouse’s opening next Thursday, Dec. 10, there were hundreds of workers scurrying about beneath the restored baroque ceilings and labyrinthine staircases: hardhats, front-of-house hires getting a menu tutorial, P.R. people typing at laptops on bar stools.

Chef Ronnie New was attempting to explain his Nashville hot chicken to 30 or so prospective servers, but the AV guys kept accidentally turning on a pre-screening clip involving Felix the Cat. An apologetic “Sorry, chef!” reverberated through the 330-seat main theater, and New patiently bore it out.

Alamo Drafthouse, the 21-theater chain, is known for its slightly offbeat programming and its extensive menu. While there’s a template — you have to be able to eat most things with your hands in the dark — New has control over his kitchen, which he created in Austin over the span of the month while the space was built out. (It’s not entirely done, either. The hot dog stuffer was in Buffalo, N.Y. as of two days prior, but no one was sure of its exact whereabouts.)

“This is the first time we fed anyone in the building,” New told me, adding that, “Today was also the first day we had cooks in the kitchen.”

New was until recently the executive chef at Comstock Saloon, with a stint at Magnolia Brewery on Haight before that. Going from a 70-seat North Beach restaurant with staggered seating to handling an entire theater worth of orders all at once is a big adjustment, but New is more excited than daunted, especially for things like mini hot dogs with Austin queso.

While he didn’t want to badmouth any cineplex chains or their nachos by name, New noted that “movie experiences in San Francisco have not been all that pleasurable. The fact that you can get a burger with a Wise Sons Deli bun and a cocktail from Isaac Shumway [formerly of Tosca] and watch Star Wars? Alamo’s overall package is awesome.”

With 27 beers on tap, cocktails, milkshakes, chicken liver mousse, pancetta mac-and-cheese, whole roasted cauliflower, and a breakfast burger, that overall package is quite elaborate. (Doesn't the idea of cauliflower in a movie theater sound absurd and very-S.F. at the same time?). What separates Alamo from the competition are its servers, who move about the theater like black-clad stagehands swapping props between acts of a play. There's a menu under every table, so patrons simply write whatever they want on a piece of paper and place it standing up, and voila.

“Alamo has this crazy following,” New said. “I try to find that happy medium between my lofty expectations for my menu and being able to serve 330 people at once.”

***

As if opening in time for the biggest blockbuster film in cinematic history weren’t enough, Alamo CEO Tim League has also signed a deal with Le Video to preserve its collection. While the final details haven’t been hashed out, Alamo and the plucky neighborhood video store Lost Weekend are teaming up to offer some Le Video rental choices in the theater’s lobby, potentially exposing those DVDs to thousands of curated impulse buys as early as January.

We know the Cynic Cave in the basement of Lost Weekend is very strong with the Dark Side of the Force, but this is great news for anyone who wants to comb through some Criterion Collection rarities for the long flight from Mos Eisley to Alderaan.


Alamo Drafthouse, opens Thursday, Dec. 17, in the New Mission Theater, 2550 Mission, 415-549-5959.