Snack time and shadow puppets: Monarchy, anarchy and the opposite extremes of dinner and a movie at Gold Class and the Alamo

One had a king and "the woman I love." One had a Queen and "Somebody to Love."

At Gold Class Cinemas, the movie was a tiny English story (the duke stutters) told against an epic backdrop (abdication, the Nazis and all that). Sunday's Academy Awards will have a few things to say about "The King's Speech."

At the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz, the show was an '80s rock ballad sing-along, a collection of hair-band videos we could have streamed on YouTube but chose instead to share with strangers waving cigarette lighters and inflatable guitars.

This was going to be a restaurant-style review of Gold Class and the Alamo, but I've come to see both in a different light: the light of darkness. Given the three main senses with which we engage food - taste, smell and sight - food loses a third of its allure when you can't see it. And by the dusty light of royal interiors or the vampire noir of a Meat Loaf video, it's just shadow puppets and finger food.

Take the Alamo's Once Upon a Time in Mexico salad ($10.99), for example. In the dark, the cold beef, damp tangles of greens and clumps of avocado share an oily disposition and a low citrus flavor profile, leaving only strips of jicama and fried tortilla to lend some personality. It all tastes better in the light, when you can see the red, white and green.

Gold Class and the Alamo are dinner-and-a-movie experiences at opposite extremes, even if they work from the same concept. At the Alamo, you write orders on paper and put them on the thin rail in front of you. At Gold Class, you push the glowing button on the tabletop armrest and a waiter appears. The checks arrive three-quarters of the way through the show.

At Gold Class, tickets are $29. With a free membership at www.goldclasscinemas.com, the price is $22 Sundays through Thursdays. That price includes popcorn, a plush suede recliner, pillows to smother people who talk during the movie and blankets to hide your tears when you realize you've paid that much to see another Ashton Kutcher romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor a comedy.

This spring, the theater plans to add lower-priced seating in the space between the screen and the recliners, said Mark Mulcahy of the theater's parent company, iPic. Those seats won't lean back or offer waiter service, but they'll cost less: $15 Sundays-Thursdays, $19 Fridays and Saturdays.

For a movie like "The King's Speech," the 40-seat auditorium is a civilized escape from the iPhone glow and never-ending chatter that have ruined going to the movies. In that living-room chair, you have Colin Firth all to yourself, whether he's writ small against an expanse of weathered plaster or in your face choking his way through a radio address.

But where Gold Class was a cushy Cadillac Escalade, the Alamo Ritz was a rocking VW bus, with an F-bombing emcee in leopard-print pants rallying us to shriek along with Cinderella and Steven Tyler. The concussion-level volume pulsed with equal parts heartache and devil horns, but the videos themselves had all the visual clarity of passing out and waking up with your contacts in. And we never, ever again need to see the whole video for "Cold November Rain." Montage, people. Montage.

I learned that Michael Bay directed "I Would Do Anything for Love," that Italian soda with vanilla and pomegranate tastes like Robitussin DM and that it's impossible to look cool playing a blow-up guitar. And nothing, I mean nothing, brings out the lighters like Journey doing "Faithfully."

What I learned, too, is that the food at both places was mostly along for the ride. Even so, let's hand out a few awards. We'll call them the Noshcars.

Best Burger goes to the Alamo. Gold Class put up three Angus sliders with bacon and little brioche tophats, but they were $15, flavorless and utterly alone on the plate. For $9.99, the Alamo's full-size burger came with fries and the funky heat of blue cheese and buffalo sauce.

Best Pizza? No contest. The Alamo's Godfather ($10.99) was recognizable as pizza, even in the dark: round and crisp and steaming with the mingled aromas of onion, basil, green bell peppers and pepperoni. At Gold Class, a pizza with chicken, bacon and barbecue sauce ($14) was an oblong Band-Aid of road rash with a uniform mushiness in the mouth and an unnatural yellow glow when the lights came up.