Oh Yes, Chef!
Easy target? Sure. But Mark Mylod’s ‘The Menu’ is a tasty and timely dark comedy about Privilege, power and payback. And food. So much food.
The Menu
Director: Mark Mylod • Writers: Seth Reiss, Will Tracy
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Hong Chau, Janet McTeer, Reed Birney, John Leguizamo, Judith Light, Paul Adelstein, Aimee Carrero, Arturo Castro, Rob Yang, Mark St Cyr, Rebecca Koon
USA • 1hr 46mins
Opens Hong Kong December 1 • IIA
Grade: B+
When an army of wait staff serve the out-of-touch diners at celebrity chef Julian Slowik’s (Ralph Fiennes) fancy pants Hawthorne restaurant in The Menu a giant rock with a splash of locally sourced seaweed foam and a jus of wild frigate berries (I made that up, I can’t remember the exact nonsense of it), Slowik begins yet more of his signature, Insta-approved “storytelling” and explains he’s “serving the island.” It’s almost as hilariously effete as the breadless bread course, and Fiennes delivers with just the right dash of simmering contempt and weary disappointment.
Taking aim at pretentious 1-percenter foodies and restaurant critics who use words like “lascivious” or “jejune” to describe a meal when most of us would say “delicious” or “not so great” is shooting fish in a barrel when it comes to social criticism, but it doesn’t make it any less savoury (see what I did there?) for it. Director Mark Mylod – who clearly learnt a thing or two about entitlement while working on 20-odd episodes of Game of Thrones and Succession – and satire writers Seth Reiss (The Onion, Late Night with Seth Meyers) and Will Tracy (also The Onion, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver) aren’t saying anything revelatory about class anxiety but the journey is the point. The Menu is low-key vicious, resolutely aligning with Anya Taylor-Joy’s working-for-a-living outlier diner Margot, while revelling in the elite guests’ schadenfreude every step of the way.
Actual kitchen god
No single diners are accepted at Hawthorne, and reservations must be secured months in advance and pre-approved by Slowik. For US$1,250 a head, Slowik’s devoted right hand, icy maitre d’ Elsa (a standout Hong Chau) greets guests at the private island’s pier, shows off the locally grown, farm-to-table bounty that will show up on the menu and points out the scallop harvester who’s also gathering ingredients for the meal. No phones. No photos.
The evening’s guests include fanboy and obnoxious self-styled epicurean Tyler (Nicholas Hoult, perfect) and his enigmatic escort Margot; garden variety richies Richard and Anne Liebbrandt (Reed Birney and Judith Light), Hawthorne regulars with marital issues; self-absorbed food critic Lillian Bloom and her editor/sycophant Ted (Janet McTeer and Paul Adelstein); George Díaz and Felicity (John Leguizamo and Aimee Carrero) a narcissistic actor past his best buy date and his miserable assistant; and douchey tech bros Dave, Bryce and Soren (Mark St. Cyr, Rob Yang and Arturo Castro). Also in the dining room is Julian’s mother Linda (Rebecca Koon), quietly getting soused in a corner. The evening starts well enough, with much oohing and aahing about the “performance” of it all and disappointment in the separated emulsion. When Slowik arrives in the steely, brutalist space he commands the room, who to a person sit in rapt attention at his philosophical ramblings about tasting and not eating – except for Margot, who calls bullshit when she sees it. The verbose sommelier (Peter Grosz) floats around serving wine with “notes of regret.” By the time the rock course rolls around the guests have realised something’s not right, but by then it’s too late to do anything about it.
The privilege is real
Tor-teeeee-ya
The Menu is deliciously sinister from start to finish. Fiennes and Chau are gloriously mean and imperiously intimidating, he in his disillusionment, she in her blind acquiescence – though Chau has the most outward fun with her dialogue. You’ll never hear “tortilla” the same way ever again. They’re the stars but the rest of the cast is uniformly pitch perfect, with Hoult the picture of ass-kissing, McTeer ideally delusional and the trio of douche-bros as punchable as any spied on the escalator on a Friday night. All get a huge assist from DOP Peter Deming, who cut his teeth on horror with Sam Raimi (Evil Dead II) and shot for David Lynch (Mulholland Drive) and Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods), and production designer Ethan Tobman (Free Guy, Beyoncé special Lemonade), whose geometry, minimalist décor and cold grey walls of the (mostly) single set seem to close in with each passing moment. If there are flaws it’s that Mylod lets the narrative and thematic threads get away from him a tiny bit in the third act, and Reiss and Tracy tease more ideas than they actually dive into: the aspirational drive and the unequal opportunity to even have it are only hinted at, and a pair of stressed out sous-chefs, Katherine (Christina Brucato) and Jeremy (Adam Aalderks), demonstrate the cost of high performance. But it’s hard to nitpick when the overall feast so satiating (I’ll stop now). Put The Menu with Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, Rian Johnson’s first Knives Out, and Paul Bartel’s OG eat the rich comedy Eating Raoul and you have an impeccable four-course banquet that’s nearly as cathartic as dumplings and a grilled cheese. — DEK
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