Martin Butera, owner of Butera's Restaurant Group.

Martin Butera, owner of Butera's Restaurant Group. Credit: Butera’s Restaurant

Good news for stir-crazy filmgoers: Dinner and a movie is still possible.

Huntington’s Cinema Arts Centre is launching a weekly online cooking show featuring movie-related recipes from local restaurateur Martin Butera. Titled “Forks & Films,” the series premieres on the Cinema’s Facebook page Thursday at 6 p.m. The first episode will feature a version of Butera’s famous meatballs, inspired by the romantic back-alley dinner scene in Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp.”

The online show could be said to mark Butera’s first foray into foodie television. Despite running two restaurants on Long Island — Butera’s in Sayville and Woodbury, and a location in Bay Shore planned to open later this year — and selling his popular chicken meatballs in supermarkets, Butera has turned down a number of offers to join the cooking-show fray, he said.

“But this is a fun event,” he said. “It’s something I believe in.”

The show was created by Jacqueline Strayer, a Centerport-based marketing and public relations consultant who teaches at NYU and Columbia University, and Butera, both longtime board members at the Cinema. After the coronavirus pandemic led to the shuttering of movie theaters, the two began brainstorming ways to keep the Cinema connected to its audience. Both recalled a popular cooking demonstration Butera had held at the Cinema for a screening of the food-centric film “Big Night” several years ago. Could something similar be done online, encouraging viewers to rent or stream a certain movie that had a food angle?

“We started morphing the idea into a show,” Strayer said. “I would host it and Martin would do a cooking demonstration of something that’s in the film itself.”

The show will not be a big-budget production. Strayer and Butera will film their segments individually at their homes, and Strayer said some of her New York University students have volunteered to edit the footage. “My husband’s going to film me on an iPhone,” she said. “It is what it is.”

Butera said he plans to set his own iPhone on a tripod and film himself making a version of his chicken meatballs — with one big difference. Because he’s heard stories of chicken selling out at stores, Butera will be using ground beef for “Forks & Films.”

“It’ll be tailored to current events, so we’ll be working with what people can get,” he said. “I’m going to try and keep it light and make it fun.”

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