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A rendering of what the new Pines Dinner Theatre will look like. PHOTO/PINES DINNER THEATER
Pines Dinner Theatre finds new home after 14 seasons
Stacy Wescoe//March 22, 2024//
Listen to this articleThe show must go on!
After 14 seasons of performances at its home in the Allentown Fairgrounds, the producers of the Pines Dinner Theatre found out in July of last year that their lease wasn’t being renewed for their 2024 season.
Starting off this year in temporary space at the Delta by Marriot in Breinigsville, the dinner theater has found a new home and it’s in a location most will find familiar.
Tentatively opening in June, Producer Oliver Blatt said the dinner theater will be opening on South Cedar Crest Boulevard, in the restaurant space that formerly housed Pistachio’s.
The restaurant, popular in the 1990s, has been closed for several years and the building has remained vacant.
“As soon as we found out our lease wouldn’t be renewed, we started looking,” said Blatt. “Just the way the space was laid out it’s a good layout for the Pines Dinner Theatre.
Between now and then, Blatt said there is a great deal of work to do in converting the space to one more befitting a dinner theater.
“We have to put in a play area for the actors,” he said.” We’re going to create raised seating for better viewing and do some work on the kitchen.”
The kitchen is a bit different from what one might expect from a dinner theater.
Serving classic American fare, Pines doesn’t serve a “one meal fits all” menu.
“When you buy a ticket it’s just for the show and then when you come in you can order whatever you want from appetizers to meals,” Blatt said.
He said that his staff found that an a la carte style menu was a more popular option with guests because they could get whatever they wanted to eat and as much or little as they wanted.
Blatt said most of the theater business will stay the same with the new venue. They still plan to put on four shows a year between April and October with a combination of matinees and dinner performances, mostly Thursday through Sunday with added shows to accommodate motorcoach business.
