‘The Menu’ (2022) Review: Serves a Dangerous Tasting Menu
Experiencing Hawthorn’s luxury dining experience is not meant for many people. Mark Mylod’s The Menu is like a slow-cooked meal, which mocks the people who frequent haute cuisine restaurants. This brutal satire pokes fun at the absurdity of fine dining at a hyper-exclusive restaurant set on a remote island. Each dish is extravagant but as the meal progresses, they become increasingly alarming. There are rules to this game: Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) only allows a certain clientele to taste his dishes; no cell phones are allowed; most importantly, Hawthorn does not accept solo reservations.
After securing exclusive seating at the world-renowned restaurant by Chef Julian, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), the last-minute date of rich foodie obsessive Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), travels to a remote island to experience his lavish tasting menu. Margot is the least interested in the kind of food Chef Julian serves at the restaurant, which contains splashes of sauces with breadless bread plates and a course served with rocks on a big leaf. Contrastingly, Tyler is obsessed with Chef Julian’s work and tries every possible way to get his attention. Other arrivals at the restaurant are pretentious tech bros, Bryce (Rob Yang), Soren (Arturo Castro) and Dave (Mark St. Cyr); a renowned restaurant critic Lillian Bloom (Janet McTeer) and her sycophant magazine editor, Ted (Paul Adelstein); a declining middle-aged actor, (John Leguizamo) with his assistant Felicity (Aimee Carrero); an older couple who are regulars at Hawthorn, Anne and Richard (Judith Light and Reed Birney). Soon enough, they become pawns in Chef Julian’s elaborate game by serving his customers a dangerous menu designed to reveal some dark secrets.
The Menu is a vengeful dark comedy that serves social commentary on consumerism and class division. From the very beginning, the movie questions who can afford the kind of cuisine Chef Julian serves his customers. This fine establishment is only targeted towards rich people who don’t care about the food that they consume.
The class division is an intriguing element to observe within The Menu. Margot is the only character that is not amused by Chef Julian’s theatrics. Unlike her date and the remaining customers, she doesn’t have access to wealth and privilege. Margot doesn’t relate to her date’s obsession with Chef Julian and she refuses to eat his dishes because she finds them to be mediocre. She simply doesn’t care. When Elsa (Hong Chau), the restaurant’s host gives a tour of the staff’s sleeping compounds with barracks of bunk beds, she is the only person that notices how absurd it is.
On the other hand, customers like Lillian, who claims to have discovered Julian and made him a star, relish all of his dishes. She spews out words like poetry, while her editor agrees with her. Being part of Chef Julian’s restaurant is an experience and he reveals the secret, or perhaps the ugly truth, that Lillian’s reviews led a lot of promising restaurants to shut down. She takes immense pride in discovering Chef Julian but she is egoistic. Other characters like the tech bros are responsible for money laundering and proudly talk about this with no shame; Anne and Richard, the super-rich older couple are more than happy to experience a dinner at Hawthorn — even if they visit 11 times and don’t know the names of any of the dishes.
Part of the reason why Chef Julian chose them specifically is that these are the kinds of people that he despises — customers who don’t understand the art behind haute cuisine. There are layers to this commentary. The ultra-rich have no problem spending money on these miniature dishes and take little notice of what is presented to them. They disregard the servers and the stories the chef introduces before each meal because to them they are not important. They don’t pay heaps of money to listen to some chef talk about how much time and effort he put into the dishes. None of the characters, except for Margot, see the game the chef is playing and she is the only one who challenges him.
The Menu is a gorgeous movie. If you have ever watched Netflix’s Chef’s Table, that is exactly how the movie is shot. It is presented and structured around Hawthorn’s menu, and each dish is presented with care and witty title cards. The shots are elegant and descend into horror quite quickly, but they will leave you hungry. From the arresting visuals of the islands to the images of the steely-open kitchen, it shows the brutal nature of what is yet to come. It’s impressive how the movie can poke fun at the food industry while showing the creativity behind fine dining cuisines.
While The Menu attacks the lives of the rich and wealthy, the narrative becomes repetitive. As each course is teased to the customers, Chef Julian’s speeches become overly long and expository. There is a reason why introductions are vital to each dish. It’s meant to build tension and slowly unravel the mystery behind Chef Julian’s plans like a slow cooker. But this structure becomes exhausting, even when the outcome is to show a spectacle of the dishes.
With splashes of horror and comedy, The Menu explores the world of fine dining restaurants. The movie has a stellar cast, including Fiennes and Taylor-Joy, who are incredible and magnetic together. Even when the movie gets clumsy and tiring, the strongest points are the commentaries behind consumerism and class division. The entire experience is to observe how the characters have been corrupted by wealth and how they behave in a closed setting. These are the elements of a conventional horror movie that executes the tasting menu with higher stakes and big egos.
