I’m really more of a sales shopper than a mall regular, but I’ve visited NorthPark Center about three times in the past couple of weeks to eat dinner, go to movie and see what the stores have to offer. Each time I found something that surprised or intrigued me, and what better to blog about than interesting minutia?

My sister and I are HUGE fans of all things Jane Austen, her most famous book "Pride and Prejudice," and the same named BBC movie made in the ’90s (not to be confused with the more recent and much shorter Keira Knightly version, which I enjoyed but am remaining loyal to the Colin Firth version). So we decided to see the new movie "Becoming Jane" last week. It’s a story loosely based on Austen’s life and reads quite a bit into her correspondence and some other details, but was extremely entertaining and simultaneously heart wrenching.

Sign up for our newsletter

* indicates required

I digress. The point of this post has to do with the NorthPark food court, which is a favorite choice of my husband’s and mine when we can’t decide what to eat. So we head to the mall and grab a Which Wich, a Snappy Salad or Tin Star tacos and then, of course, some sort of concoction from Sonic (there are 168,894 drink combinations, after all). On occasion I have seen people grab food and then head upstairs to the AMC theater, but since no movie theater I’ve ever attended has allowed outside food and drinks, I figured people were sneaking stuff in. My sister and I had some extra time before the show began, though, so we decided to try taking food in and see what happened.

What happened is … nothing. We walked in with our to-go bags and Sonic Styrofoam cups visibly in hand and gave our tickets to the movie employee, who told us to head to theater three. I immediately became an AMC NorthPark convert. I’ve actually walked away from that box office after learning that it would cost me $9.50 to see a movie I wasn’t even sure I would like, but now, knowing that I can bring in yummy food that costs me about as much as a bucket of theater popcorn, the price seems a little more reasonable. (And the pre-paid Entertainment Book movie passes I buy for only $6 or $7 make it a LOT more reasonable.)