How Late-Stage Capitalism Killed the Chef in The Menu

Do you ever feel guilty about eating food at an expensive five-star hotel or fine dining restaurant? If not, you will after you watch chef Slowik (an intensely terrifying Ralph Fiennes) serve you a five-course meal in The Menu.

Celebrity chef Julian Slowik invites a group to an avant-garde dinner at a private island where cooking is not just a culinary skill but an art, a science about life and death itself. Strange things start happening after the first meal is served.

A gastro-psychological thriller, a dark comedy, a social experiment but, most importantly, The Menu is a satire on how capitalism and mindless consumerism kills creativity in art and eventually the artist.

The Menu takes a stab (often literally) at the crème de la crème elitist society that prides itself at being intellectually qualified connoisseurs of art but in reality, are nothing more than snobs flaunting their wealth. Contrary to popular perception, The Menu, puts forth a hard to digest fact that food is not a great leveler, instead it is a divider between the haves and the have-nots, between the givers and the takers, and between the consumers and the creators.

The next time you order expensive food, think twice. And for God’s sake, don’t eat it; taste it, savor it. You’ll know why after The Menu.