A new film about the worst excesses of fine dining makes mincemeat of gastronomic pretention and the customers who sustain it.
What are the worst things about fine dining restaurants? The chef’s ego? The pretentious claims about the food’s concept? A meal’s supposed narrative arc which is revealed course by endless course? Or is it the final eye-watering bill? A week’s wages for food which may – or may not – have been mouth-watering but was served in such mean, delicately tweezered portions that it leaves you craving something more homely – like a cheeseburger?
In The Menu, a new film from director Mark Mylod, all of the above are at play but they are no more than the ghastly clientele deserve. According to this burnt black horror satire, the worst thing about fine dining restaurants are the jaded clients who patronise them.
The film takes place over one dinner at The Hawthorne, an ultra-exclusive restaurant located on an isolated island. Ruling the restaurant with a pain-impervious hand is the celebrity chef Julian Slowik. Played with a steely, dead pan resolve by Ralph Fiennes, Slowik is a man whose spirit has curdled after he finally realises that he has strived all his career to ‘satisfy people who can never be satisfied’.
Culinary bragging rights
With the exception of the excruciating foodie fan boy Tyler, played by Nicholas Hoult, the guests are not particularly excited or pleased to have bagged a booking at the $1250 a head Hawthorne. For most of them, it is only what they feel entitled to anyway. The majority of them are not really engaged with the food. It is just another experience to boast that they have done. Another bragging right to be ticked off from a long list of decadent luxuries.
The spoiled, over-indulged character of most of the guests is underlined by their back stories. They are all people for whom too much is never enough. Even when everything has become boring. Whether it be power, money, sex, fame or adoration that they crave, they are a next level tier of grasping swindlers, adulterers, egotists, show offs and narcissists. The wives, partners, clients and staff who they hurt are just collateral damage – little people who don’t matter.
Choke on the joke
As the purpose of the meal, it’s ‘overarching theme’ as Tyler puts it, is revealed, it becomes as clear as consommé that Chef Slowik intends to punish his guests. There will be no spoilers here but, as you may have guessed, his vengeance is as meticulously planned as his menus. It starts with a little lightly whipped humiliation. A subtle play on tasting menu jokes involving a course which is deliberately missing the hero ingredient. Is Slowik teasing the diners with a gastro gag that they are all expected to be in on? Or is he mocking the pretentions of a multi-course dinner?
The only fly in Slowik’s bloody soup is Margot. Played by Anya Taylor-Joy, she is Tyler’s dining companion and a woman who has been invited to The Hawthorne on false pretences. While the other diners prattle on about ‘eating the ocean’ and whether or not the plating of a dish is ‘needy’, Margot has no qualms about calling bullshit on the artifice of fine dining and is the first to recognise the chef’s underlying motives.
Strong meat
Like all satire, The Menu uses exaggeration and hyperbole but without losing sight of the actual conventions it is mocking. The worst extremes of fine dining are ripe for satire but the scriptwriters, Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, have not over-egged their dish. From over-the-top crockery designs to courses called ‘Memory’, the tropes it sends up are all too recognisable.
You certainly do not need to have troughed on too many ‘menus de dégustation’ to make the most of this film but it might help. Although, to my shame, that is exactly the sort of knowing comment that the snobbish Tyler drops as his meal commences.
The Menu is on general release now.
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