A love letter to the snack kiosk: How Rio Cinema’s perfect popcorn represents its importance
I remember the day well. It was October 2024, cold, I’d drunk a Guinness before, and I was nursing another as I settled into my regular seat: the best place to be is the left side, by the aisle, far back, as that gives you a clear shot view. The Apprentice was starting, I was at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, I took a bite of the popcorn, and my life changed.
On that one night at Rio, perfection had been reached. Alongside things like seat comfort, ticket price, and programming, I find that popcorn is a great yet underrated metric to measure the greatness of a cinema by. I’d even argue that you can tell everything you need to know about how much an establishment cares from the snack counter.
Think about your big cinema chains, your Odeons, your Vues, and, god forbid, your Cineworlds, where the snacks are dreadful. The sweets are just the same bagged brands you could buy next door at Sainsbury’s for a quarter of the price, practically encouraging you to sneak your own in because they clearly do not care. The drinks are uninspired, the presence of nachos on the menu threatens to stink out the entire screening, and then there’s the popcorn: stale, tasteless, cardboard-like. Made in giant vats more to fill the counter than to actually taste good. Those cinemas do not care about the popcorn because they do not care about you. ‘Go watch Avengers, idiot’, the whole experience seems to say.
But at independent cinemas, it’s different. At Castle Cinema in Homerton, their knowledge of their own community seems to allow them to be bold. Their sweet popcorn is almost caramelised, and you can get olives. One time I was in there, and they had an event on with Campari, handing out free Negronis to the crowd in a moment that smacked of east London and the fact that this is reportedly Charli XCX’s favourite cinema.
In Shoreditch, it always makes me oddly emotional seeing fizzy Vimto on tap at the kiosk of RichMix. As a venue that also serves as an education centre and a community art space, seeing the childhood nostalgia juice right there at a place that is a space to serve kids just as much as London’s trendy workforce, gets me. It’s a similar story up in Sheffield at Showroom, or Manchester’s Home.
I find that a good cinema’s snack desk reflects how much attention they’re paying, how well they know the people coming through their doors, and from there, it’s a measure of how well the entire building will run.
In October 2024, Rio reached perfection as every single kernel of my bucket of mixed popcorn was delicious. Do you know how rare that is? No teeth-smashing unpopped bits, no flavourless let-downs. A complete spread where every piece was yummy; the salt perfectly salty, the sweet with that nice extra crunch. It was so good I could barely concentrate on my film, and the bucket only cost £4, a mere slice of what Cineworld are robbing you for crap.
All of this is to say, Rio cares deeply. Want a cocktail? They’ll mix you that up fresh, even make you a unique one to match your movie. Want a hot chocolate? They’ve got cakes and cookies to go with it. In the mid-afternoons, when they host old school matinees for old folks, or give parents a moment to feel like themselves again during baby screenings, the foyer becomes a pick and mix of free coffee, tea and biscuits while maybe in the corner, a class of school kids are doing some activity or another under the poster advertising a local event, the art show put on by a staff member, a fun all-nighter.
Right in the heart of Dalston, where it has sat since 1909 as one of London’s longest-standing cinemas, Rio becomes a perfect representation of its community. As the favoured spot for so many Mubi tote-slinging, Letterboxd-pro-account-owning modern cinephiles, it caters to them with panel talks and a programme that prioritises more interesting new releases over blockbusters. But for those beyond the gentrifiers, there’s a broad programme of classics, kids films, performances, DJ nights, specific events for the queer community that head from Rio straight to Dalston superstore, or the African community who have long since deemed Dalston their space, screening documentaries or old flicks from home.
Rio also serves a vital behind-the-scenes community role as it houses an essential archive of Hackney’s history as well as the history of the cinema itself. And while the venue’s snack kiosk might feel like an old way to encapsulate all of this, it does with Nigerian Guinness, Tunnocks teacakes, Tony’s Chocoloney, and the best popcorn in London, made fresh, in smaller batches, by staff who always seem to love it there as much as any paying customer.
