Every dish in the menu and what they really mean

Every course served at the Hawthorn by Chef Slowik is deliberate, and The menu Dishes have a specific meaning behind them. The menu is centered around a unique dining experience on the island called Hawthorn, where twelve guests dine in an exclusive restaurant owned by celebrity chef Julian Slovic. The twelve guests consist of wealthy businessmen, celebrities, food critics and others who can offer such an expensive restaurant experience – a stark contrast to the kitchen staff who live and work on the island with the chef to earn their living and provide service to the rich Minority paid.

As the name suggests, The menu is structured around an actual menu cooked and planned by Julian himself. Each dish tells a story, with an overarching team that will eventually lead to the revelation of Chef Slowik’s plan to kill everyone at the end of The menu. Most of the courses are introduced by Slovic himself as The dishes are served and cooked in front of the guests, explaining the ingredients used and the meaning behind them. Each dish is a commentary on the meaning of food, the food industry itself, and the wealthy clients who often have exclusive dining experiences.

Lemon caviar served on raw oysters with mignonette

The first of The menu Movie dishes is not served on the island, but is given to the guests on the way to The menus main restaurant, Hawthorn, after they board the boat. As the only dish without an explanation, viewers cannot be sure what the intended meaning behind this course is meant to be. however, The menu May have hinted at the chef’s design and history in the sourness of the lemon. In fact, Taylor is enthusiastic and shares an unnecessary and possibly incorrect explanation of the dish.

Audiences who are familiar with the dish and caught Taylor’s pretentious statement already have a clue about how his interactions with the chef might go. However, because Slovic has a passion for making good food, despite the fact that it was tied up by outside forces, It is possible that this was meant to be the true final and authentic offering of his talents before his plan gets underway.

Amuse Bouche

The early hint that Chef Slovic is in control

Amuse Bouche is the first dish served The menu Cast on the island. Before the dinner, guests were taken on a tour of the island and shown how all the ingredients for The menu Movie dishes are harvested and presented there. They were then taken to the restaurant where they were treated to the complimentary opening dish, a bite-sized treat comprised of cucumber melon, milk snow, and chard lace.

Interestingly, Amuse Bouche is a dish that is traditionally not ordered by patrons, but, instead, served depending only on the chef’s selection. Therefore, with this dish, The menu Is foreshadowing how the entire evening was meticulously crafted by Julian, and at this point, the guests have no control. However, it is also a normal enough dish that it does not raise any suspicions early on.

First course: The island

A metaphor about the fleeting nature of human life

The various locations where The menu Was filmed was crucial to establishing the island, the setting of the artistic massacre. It is an ideal horror location because it initially seems like a beautiful and scenic, albeit ominous, place to have a restaurant only to become a prison from which there is no escape. The first course is also the first dish that Chef Slovic introduced, as he would do for all successful ones The menu Movie Dishes.

From the seaweed to the fresh raw scallop, every ingredient of the dish comes from the island itself, as the name suggests. The chef is clearly inspired by nature, especially the ocean, and the entire ecosystem around them. This highlights the relevance of the raw ingredients compared to the fleeting presence of human life on the island, again foreshadowing how The menu will end

Second course: Breadless bread plate

The second course is made of no bread with only savory touches, defined as genius by some guests but offensive to others. As Lillian Blum suggests in her comment, the concept of the dish is rooted in class history, which is often highlighted by the privileged diners in The menu. however, It is also possible that this was not the intended purpose and was simply her own pretentious reading of it.

The first truly unusual offering among The menu Movie dishes, this plate of sauces suggests that none of the island’s guests deserve bread. After all, they are not ordinary patrons, and as explained by Chef, bread and grain have always been the food of the poor throughout history. This was the first open clue about Chef’s outrageous plans and his contempt for his guests.

Third course: chicken tacos with scissors in it

The threatening dish with a chilling past

Julian calls this course “Memory.” In his speech, Chef mentions when he used to eat tacos with his family on Tuesdays. One night, when the father came home drunk and hurt his mother, Julian stopped him by stabbing him in the thigh with a pair of scissors. This explains why the dish is served with a small pair of scissors in the chicken. Julian also mentions that this is a dish he has been making since the beginning of his career as a chef. But, as with everyone The menu Movie dishes, these delicious tacos come with a dark twist.

The guests soon discover that the tacos contain personal and sometimes compromising pictures or documents of each guest. As such, the tacos expose the guests’ secrets, like Richard cheating on his wife. Hilariously, Taylor’s photos were taken of him during the dinner. Not only that, but the personalized tacos also subtly reveal why Julian chose the specific guests. The food critic Lillian, for example, caused many restaurants to close by having their image displayed on her tacos. They all represent why Julian has lost his love for his craft.

Fourth Course: The Mess

Jeremy is Julian’s sous chef, who serves a key purpose in one of The menu Movie Dishes. The fourth run begins with Jeremy shooting himself: he will never be good enough to be at the chef’s level, as Julian explained in his speech. After his body was taken away, The guests were served pressed vegetables, roasted fillet, potato confit, beef just, and bone marrow.

During this course, The menu Quickly takes a dark, horrible turn. It is now clear that in addition to the underlying hostility that the chef and his team have towards the guests, there is also a danger here. This is further emphasized when Richard’s finger is cut off when trying to leave. The meaning of “The Mass” is simple and clear: the pursuit of culinary perfection to please strangers puts chefs under enormous, sometimes deadly pressure.

Palate Cleanser: Wild Bergamot and Red Clover Tea

The evening’s last moments of normality

Tea is not only a good gum cleanser, but also a calming drink. It may be the most normal The menu Movie dishes, but this is only to ensure that the guests remain calm for the next part, even after witnessing Julian shoot himself. During this dish, Julian offers his guests his chance to ask him questions, like The tea represents the last moment of the calm before the storm.

In this case, he explains that the guests represent ingredients to a larger concept, foreshadowing the end of The menu And the boss’s intention to kill everyone. He explains why he despises each and every one of them. So the “gum cleaner” is a darkly ironic piece of comedy that fits wonderfully into the tone of the film, with Slowik as a calming and helpful addition to the evening, and he also takes it as an opportunity to leave. The servants know that they are going to die.

Man’s Folly: Dungeness crab, umeboshi, yogurt whey, kelp

A culinary exploration of male insecurity

For the sixth of The menus movie dishes, everyone is invited to leave the restaurant and go out on the island. This dish was not introduced by Chef Julian but by Sous Chef Catherine. In her speech, she mentions how she rejected Julian’s advances, which made him ignore her for eight months. Chef Slowik gives her the opportunity to discuss her mistreatment as a way of penance and also allows Catherine to stab him with kitchen scissors.

As for the course itself, it is called “Humanity”, and is offered only to women. When the female guests are led back into the restaurant, the men are given the opportunity to escape, showing how ready they are to run away and selfishly abandon their close friends, bosses or significant others. At their tables, from the Dungeness crab to the fermented yogurt, The women feast on the representation of the pretentious insecurities of toxic men. Made with mostly ingredients from the sea, it also symbolizes the futility of trying to escape.

Passard A.: Hot-cold, sweet and savory soft-boiled egg

A traditional gourmet dish

This special dish is offered last as all the people attempt, and fail, to escape. It’s an egg with crème fraîche and maple. The sinking of Taylor against the other people in this sequence suggests what will happen to Taylor in The menu Next: He is not trying to escape and is not exactly like all the other guests. Contrary to the others, it is revealed later that Taylor knew the dinner guests would die from the beginning.

Interestingly, the passard egg is a typical dish served in gourmet restaurants. It is given as a reward for the last person to be caught trying to escape – found by the chef’s staff hiding inside the island’s chicken coop. Aside from the hilarious connection, serving a fancy soft-boiled egg to the man who put his best efforts into an essentially pointless job adds insult to injury. Although it was most likely a tasty dish, the genital symbolism is clear.

Taylor’s bulls**t

Terrible lamb cooked by an even worse person

Although this was not initially included among The menuIn the movie Dishes, in a twist, it is revealed that Taylor knew that he and whoever he went with was going to die and, despite this, knowingly brought Margot with him. Taylor sees himself as a connoisseur and was willing to die and let others die to get an exclusive dining experience. However, Slowik points out that despite Taylor’s passion, he did not notice anything about the art of cooking.

Julian humiliates Taylor, making him cook while everyone is watching him and calling his food of undercooked lamb and inedible sauce horrible. He thus destroyed the art of cooking. After Julian whispers something in his ear, Taylor leaves to hang out. Although the viewers do not know what was said to Taylor, one can imagine that the chef’s disappointment in him and his humiliation led to his suicide.

Birthday cake

A surreal moment of levity

As Margot is allowed to leave at the end of the menu, It becomes clear that she is different from other guests as Julian asks Margot for her help with the dessert. Although the audience is not shown this, There is another savory course in the menu, One that Margot did not witness.

When Margot returns to the restaurant, one of the diners at the Hawthorne is presented with a cake for his birthday. Whether it was pre-planned or just a way to buy some time before Margo comes back, it’s just hilarious to see the murderous staff give a guest a cake and even sing the birthday song like in a normal restaurant. It perfectly adds to the dark comedy of The menu As Slowik and the staff happily present the cake to the traumatized birthday boy.

Supplemental Course: A cheeseburger

Margot’s successful bid for survival

The cheeseburger was not originally part of The menus movie dishes, but was made at Margot’s request. The meaning of the cheeseburger in The menu is simple. This dish reminds Chef of his love for cooking and for actually feeding someone else – someone who is hungry and just wants to enjoy simple, real food. Therefore, he lets Margaret go, taking her cheeseburger.

how so The last memory of Julian will be that of food he really enjoyed cooking, which is how he started his career. Ultimately, this course is what Margot escapes into The menu And is the only one left alive. It also serves as a fitting moment for Margot’s character, as she is able to prove that she is not like the rest of the self-centered diners as she is able to recognize Slovik on a human and intimate level, appealing to a side of Him that others did not see behind his enormous talents.

Final Desert: Human S’Mores

The fiery end to Slowik’s last meal

After each payment, the staff prepares the final course, the one that, like The menu ends, will cause the death of everyone on the island. S’mores may be a simple course, even called boring by chefs, but it is often associated with childhood innocence and good memories. Out of The menu Dishes of a movie, it was also the most epic, a fitting finale for everyone involved.

Interestingly, at this point in the evening, the diners seemingly came to accept their fate and even embrace the show of the final course. They freely offer their credit cards to pay for the meal while knowing it won’t be necessary because everyone will be dead. When Slowik lights the fire, he is the first to burn, showing that his death will always be a part of the evening, and in the end, he shared the moment with the servants he was angry with.

Given the thematic depth of The menu And while little is actually explained about the significance of each dish in the movie itself, there are many theories about what the food selected by Chef Slowik for the Hawthorne’s last night actually mean. for example, A popular theory is that Margot’s last dish, the cheeseburger, may actually have been prepared with human flesh, meaning she literally ate the rich. It’s even possible that Chef prepared the burger with Taylor’s body. This is only a theory, and a dark one, but it would fit many of the themes The menu and its overall tone.

Another theory surrounding Margot’s cheeseburger is that it is poisoned. This is a simpler theory than the burger being a case of cannibalism, because the idea that it was poisoned doesn’t play into any of the film’s deeper message. Rather, it simply suggests that Chef Slovic poisoned the cheeseburger to ensure that Margo would not survive. The idea that Slowik wanted to kill Margot like that doesn’t feel quite right, because if he really wanted to kill her, he could have simply refused to let her leave the horn and burn her with them. The rest of the guests.

Margot’s cheeseburger is the dish The menu This caused the most theories, but many viewers dissected some of the other dishes looking for hidden meaning as well. For example, there are some who believe that the tea that the guests drank at the beginning of the night was printed, and that some of the events of The menu Couldn’t have really happened. This seems unlikely, as it would undermine the entire movie, but it just goes to show how ripe the 2022 horror comedy is for interesting fan theories.