The Barossa Valley Chocolate Company Nightlight Outdoor Cinema, Tanunda, South Australia

Barossa Valley Chocolate Company's Outdoor cinema.

Pre movie at the Barossa Valley Chocolate Company outdoor cinema. This is the view from
the VIP seats. You're a bit further back but you get a slightly higher chair and a small coffee table.

While it may not be as big as the Chocolate Shop Enigma and I recently visited on our trip to Perth, Western Australia, The Barossa Valley Chocolate Company has a good range of chocolates in it's own, onsite store, and a pretty decent size café that's open seven days, from 10am-5pm for gelati, coffee, and cake, and 11am to 3pm for lunch. They do encourage you to book for lunch.

We had no idea this place existed despite on living around a 30 minute car drive away. To be fair, as near as I can tell, from their website, they've only been open since around 2018-19 and have been winning awards for their chocolate ever since.

Main show room inside the Barossa Valley Chocolate Company's Shop.

The main shop area. The wall on the left is where you can select your complimentary
250g chocolate box if you purchase a VIP ticket.

The Barossa Valley Chocolate Company crossed Enigma's path when she saw a social media ad for their Nightlight Outdoor Cinema nights, where they project a classic movie onto an outdoor screen, and patrons bring a blanket and/or low seater chairs from which to watch the film.

Alternatively, if you want to be a bit more 'flash' like we did, you can buy a VIP ticket an reserve a chair and small coffee table toward the back of the cinema (bring cushions if you do this. The seats were good quality plastic seats, but no cushions).

The VIP ticket also got you a complimentary 250g block of chocolate (your choice from the main wall in the shop), and a complimentary gelati ice-cream. I went with a box of dark chocolate covered raspberry liquorish chocolates, and a cookies and cream gelati. Enigma went for chocolate covered peanut brittle and a chocolate gelati.

The movie started at 8:45pm - which is about when it was dark enough to see the projection on the screen clearly - however we booked for 6:30pm so we could have dinner in the café. Our table was out on the deck looking out to the lake.

We were also right next to the live entertainment, a female singer, guitarist, who I can't tell you the name of but she sung quite a few contemporary classics that I knew and was very good.

All meals are made from as much local produce as possible. We opted for a side of chips (fries) and one of their stone baked pizzas, the 'Big Bad Wolf' which consisted of Tomato sugo, shredded leg ham, pepperoni, salami, bacon & mozzarella cheese.

Our pizza with a side of chips/fries and sauces.

Obligatory photo of our food... which was very nice!

While we did have some time to kill between dinner and the movie, we used that time to select our complimentary chocolates, and browse the shop.

We had a perfect night for the movie. Early on it seemed like it might be a bit breezy, and there were a lot of bugs in the air, but the wind settled down and the bugs didn't seem to be a problem at all.

Our classic movie was Night at the Museum with Ben Stiller. I'd already seen it many, many years ago but Enigma hadn't at all. I won't review it here, but it is a solid family movie with a few stars I'd forgotten were in it, who were just starting out in Hollywood at the time but are big, international stars today.

Night at the Museum playing on the screen with a full moon in the sky.

Owen Wilson on screen alongside an almost full moon and clear sky for the evening.
While there were bugs in the air, once it got dark, we didn't even notice them.

Overall it was a great night out. I'm not sure how long the outdoor cinema program runs for through the Summer but the place is still worth a visit for lunch, to browse the chocolate shop, and to try out some of their other experiences. For more information and bookings visit their website.

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