Though The Menu is a fictional story, it was of utmost importance to director Mark Mylod to make sure that every detail in the movie felt real. Except, of course, a handful of deliciously dark twists. The movie—with a razor-sharp screenplay by veteran late-night talk show writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy—tells the story of a dozen people who take a boat to a private island for an exclusive dining experience prepared by chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). Co-starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult, along with other top-tier talent, the story feels off-kilter from the very first frames. As the evening unfolds, it becomes clear that chef Slowik has much more than an exquisite tasting menu in store for his guests.
“After reading the script, it took me two seconds to say yes,” says Dominique Crenn, the owner and head chef at Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, and the only woman chef in the United States thus far to receive three Michelin stars. Mylod and the film’s producers hired Crenn to design and create the nine dishes that comprise Chef Slowik’s menu, and Crenn brought her executive pastry chef, Juan Contreras, to assist. Contreras jokes about joining the production, saying, “I had no choice,” but the two have been business partners for 17 years, and one rarely works without the other. The Menu’s creative team also brought in chef John Benhase from Savannah, Georgia, where the film was shot, to teach the kitchen staff—actors who were hired for the film only if they had previous restaurant experience—knife skills, plating, and the etiquette and orchestration of working in a fine-dining restaurant kitchen. The three worked closely with Mylod, food stylist Kendall Gensler, and production designer Ethan Tobman to create the visual story of a seamless kitchen and restaurant experience for viewers and actors alike.
“During filming it felt very much like theater,” says Benhase, who joined Crenn and Contreras toward the end of their preproduction prep time and stayed on through the six-week shoot. “Especially how that kitchen is onstage within the restaurant, almost like an altar. Having that many people plating at all times is slightly unrealistic to how intense it would be [in a normal kitchen], and also having so few diners, but when you look closely at the background throughout the movie, it’s all accurate.”
Benhase coached the actors—some of them were local chefs whom he knew—down to the tiniest detail and was on set to spot-check as they worked. He showed them how to hold tweezers, how to use their arms efficiently, how to move past people with purpose and intensity. When the movie shows them cooking the next course, they’re really cooking the next course. Everything from roasting garlic to chopping vegetables to preparing garnishes to stirring stocks, sautéing mushrooms, the pastry team in the back rolling dough and baking, what’s on the grill before it goes to the plates—all of it is happening in real time, with real, edible food, something that is almost unheard of in film and television productions.
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
“Usually, they have prop food in film,” says Crenn. “But it doesn’t taste like anything, it doesn’t look beautiful. I was not going to do prop food. I said to the director I wanted to make the food as if they were eating at a restaurant. It was very important to us that every time an actor put that food in their mouth [it tasted good]. The idea was also to bring emotion to that part of the work. I felt I was not doing a movie, but that I was literally creating beauty and a story for people to come and experience.”
Crenn and Contreras’s work with the food didn’t change the plot in any way, as Reiss and Tracy had placeholder recipes or dishes that helped the story move forward as they’d conceived it. But the two chefs did end up adapting the menu, as Crenn describes it, to their script. “The story was there, but the dishes are definitely mine and Juan’s,” she tells VF.
For example, Contreras mentions the film’s Amuse-Bouche, which is compressed and pickled cucumber melon, milk snow, and charred lace. They told the chefs that the dish needed to use the Pacojet, a high-tech piece of cooking equipment, because Hoult’s character was obsessed with the professional kitchen appliance that micro-purées deep-frozen foods into sorbets, mousses, and more, and which eventually figures into his character’s arc in a major and devastating fashion. This information in hand, Contreras designed an avant-garde Amuse–Bouche dish.
