What was Farrelli’s Cinema Supper Club?
Farrelli’s Cinema Supper Club was a restaurant that happened to have a movie screen at the end of the dining room, and for most of the 2000s it was the only place in the Valley where you could order a steak and watch a film at the same table.
It opened in 2001, three months before 9/11, at 14202 N Scottsdale Road, Suite 114, in the Thunderbird Square North strip center near Thunderbird Road, on the Phoenix-Scottsdale border at the south edge of the Airpark. The owners were a husband-and-wife team, Tom and Wendy Farrelli. Tom had been a chef at Pinnacle Peak Country Club, and the couple already ran a catering business, and the East Valley Tribune later reported that its revenue is what carried the theater when business got harder after the attacks.
New Times described the setting as a 1940s-style theater. There were two auditoriums holding up to 100 people between them, mostly in booths, with large tables, gold and maroon chairs, high-tops and a lounge. The routine was simple: buy a ticket, arrive 30 minutes before showtime, order dinner, and eat by the light of the screen while servers worked the room by illuminated table coasters. The food was American supper-club cooking, from Angus cheeseburgers and homemade cheesecake to a cumin-rubbed New York strip and filet mignon bordelaise.
The crowd was everyone the multiplexes ignored: retired couples, parents with young children at 5 p.m., dates. New Times named it the Valley’s Best Place for a First Date in its first year. It closed on October 8, 2011, when, by the owners’ account, the bank that had taken over the property walked away from lease talks. Its strip center has since become a dining address in its own right, home to Hush Public House.
Our verdict: Farrelli’s was a decade ahead of the dine-in theater chains, and too small to survive their arrival.
What a night at Farrelli’s was like
Arrive early and order. The Tribune’s 2005 profile laid out the system. Guests came at least 30 minutes before showtime, earlier for a drink in the lounge, ordered dinner, and the food came to the table as the film started. Ordering was not required, but most people did. Wendy Farrelli admitted it took explaining: “I guess it’s a curious concept,” she said. “People don’t get it.” Her other line was the business plan: “Once people try it, they are hooked.”
The menu. The 2005 menu ran from popcorn ($4.50) and Sonoran guacamole and salsa ($6.96) to a cumin-rubbed New York strip with Gorgonzola butter ($19.95), and Wendy Farrelli talked to the Tribune over a bowl of clam chowder. By 2007 the Tribune listed roast tenderloin with herb cheese, filet mignon bordelaise and grilled vegetable lasagna, entrées from $7 to $23, a large wine and cocktail list, and a children’s menu of pasta marinara and chicken tenders. New Times’ 2001 first-date math was the cheapest version: two tickets for $12, sodas with free refills for $3, two Angus cheeseburgers on sourdough rolls with fries for $18 and homemade cheesecake for $10, all of it $43.
The films. The lineup mixed PG and R movies, though Wendy kept away from anything too gory, because, she said, that was not the kind of show you want to watch while you are eating. In summer 2007 the screens carried Evan Almighty, Ocean’s Thirteen, Waitress and License to Wed. By 2011, New Times noted, the theater generally showed second-run films weeks or months after other cinemas.
The rules. In 2007, tickets were $8, there was a $15 food and beverage minimum on Friday and Saturday, and showtimes started at 5 p.m. on weeknights with matinees from noon on weekends.
The regulars. The Tribune met a couple who came once or twice a week, usually Wednesdays. “We roll in, have a good dinner and a movie, and there’s no one kicking our chairs and there’s no gum sticking to our shoes,” the husband said. Families with young children and retirees from as far as Sun City made the drive, and the owners said summer was strong because the theater was air-conditioned and everything outdoors was closed.
The dinner theater that the chains caught up with
Farrelli’s opened at the worst possible moment and spent ten years making up for it. The Tribune reported that the concept was hard for Valley moviegoers to grasp, that business got harder after 9/11, and that the couple got by on their catering company’s revenue. The closing letter the owners posted in 2011 named the same three enemies in order: 9/11, the uncooperative movie industry and the recession. Small independent screens depend on distributors’ terms, and a two-room house showing films weeks after release was always going to be selling dinner first and the movie second.
For most of the decade, that was enough, because nobody else was doing it. New Times wrote in 2011 that Farrelli’s had been the lone dinner-and-a-movie house in the Valley for most of its life, until iPic Theaters opened at the Scottsdale Quarter in 2010, and that AMC launched its Fork & Screen concept at the Esplanade 14 in September 2011. Within a month of AMC’s launch, Farrelli’s was closed.
The immediate cause, by the owners’ account, was the building. Their Facebook post said they had begun negotiating with the new landlord, the bank that had taken over the property, which abruptly ended talks the week before and was not willing to renew a reasonable lease. “We didn’t see it coming, don’t understand their motivation and have no options but to shut down,” they wrote, and pointed customers to their catering company, Corporate Bistro, LLC. A theater listing records the last day as October 8, 2011; the announcement went up that Sunday, and New Times reported it on October 12.
The strip center had a second act anyway. In 2019, chef Dom Ruggiero opened Hush Public House in the same Thunderbird Square North center, and it earned a Michelin listing; in 2023 he added the lounge Bar Cena next door. The press we found does not say what took Farrelli’s Suite 114.
Honest assessment: Farrelli’s was more charming than it was great, a family-run supper club with a projector, and its food was never reviewed the way its concept was. But it got the idea right a decade before the chains did, and the loyalty in its regulars’ words is the best evidence that the 2000s Valley wanted it. It belongs in the lost column with the other independent rooms along Scottsdale Road that the recession and their landlords ended.