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After all, it is just food.

The Menu (2022)
Director: Mark Mylod

Back when Master Chef and Gordon Ramsay's 'Hell's Kitchen' were a rage in Malaysia, I used to ask myself what the farce was all about. I could not understand why the chef had had his honours stripped off or what was wrong if the fries were slightly soggy or the meat was overcooked. After all, food is medicine, and we eat to live, not live to eat.


Obviously, none of the people at the receiving end of my lament saw any merit in what I was blabbering. To them, culinary skill is an art form. In fact, they thought it was science, a branch of science more delicate than neurosurgery or detonating a time bomb. On top of knowledge of alchemy, art was the essence of luring potential gluttons.

An episode of 'Hell's Kitchen', or sometimes 'Master Chef', carried so much toxicity and backstabbing as wannabe cooks scrambled to stir up cuisine in record time. They had to do that with the provided ingredients in the most creative way as deemed by the judges. In my school of life, these were all exercises of futility, as productive as counting the grains of rice before cooking! After being brought up by a mother who impressed her children that gluttony is a trait best left behind in our pursuit to achieve greater heights in life, I fail to appreciate the anger of the Head honchos. 


'The Menu' must be a revenge movie for all those cynics like me who like to ridicule the histrionics exhibited by braggers obsessed with culinary skills. It also takes a swipe at the so-called self-professed know-it-alls who think they possess the know-how the best about cooking, where to source the best foods and how to bring out the best flavours. And combine with it an exotic location, a mad chef and murder to complement, you get this movie - 'The Menu'. 

It is a dark comedy that tells the story of a group of food connoisseurs attending a food-tasting session worth dying for. It sniggers at the obnoxious waste of resources and the extreme ridiculousness of high-end restaurants and their equally eccentric chefs.




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Location: Bern, Switzerland

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