The Menu Ending Explained: Eat The Rich
Class divides have plagued us almost since the dawn of civilization, since the very first groups of humans separated themselves according to the haves and have-nots. From the caveman with the biggest stick to the CEO with the largest bank account, things really haven't changed all that much. In the 2022 dark comedy "The Menu," those who have spent their whole lives in servitude finally get a chance to turn the tables in a truly bizarre tableau.
In the film, directed by Mark Mylod, a group of wealthy, privileged diners visit an exclusive island restaurant called Hawthorne for a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience. The whole meal is planned in advance from start to finish (no substitutions) and has a story that goes along with it, all created by the eccentric but brilliant Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes in a brilliant performance). Slowik uses the evening as a way to punish his guests, his employees, and himself for a litany of misdeeds, sort of like Kevin Spacey in "Seven" if he had watched way too much Food Network.
Our protagonists are Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), a snobbish and excitable foodie, and Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), his mysterious but world-weary date. As Tyler watches the guests board the boat that will take them to the secluded island for the night, he tells her that "tonight will be madness." He's excited for that "madness," and it's so much more than even the streetwise Margot could ever anticipate. By the end of the night everyone will be dead except for her, and her survival ends up being contingent on figuring out how to give Slowik the one thing he wants desperately and cannot have — job satisfaction.
The guests and their many sins
"The Menu" is a movie about service workers, but the guests they serve also play a major role. Anyone who's ever worked in a service industry, whether it's food service, retail, healthcare, or sex work, has stories about nightmare clients. The diners at Hawthorne on this particular evening have been picked carefully by Chef Slowik, with the meal tailored to punish their specific wrongdoings. Each of the guests has done something to earn the chef's ire, and throughout the evening we see evidence of why he might be upset with them even before he tells them explicitly why they're each doomed to die.
There are the restaurant's most frequent guests, Richard (Reed Birney) and his wife Anne (Judith Light), who have visited Hawthorne 11 times despite it being one of the most exclusive restaurants in the world, but Richard can't remember any of his meals and has been cheating on his wife. Then there's the food critic Lillian (Janet McTeer) and her assistant Ted (Paul Adelstein), whose cruel words in reviews have closed restaurants. There's also a hack actor (John Leguizamo) and his spoiled assistant (Aimee Carrero), a trio of arrogant and entitled businessmen who work for the man who owns Hawthorne (Rob Yang, Arturo Castro, and Mark St. Cyr), and Slowik's alcoholic mother. Tyler's crime is his extreme devotion to dissecting the chef's work without truly appreciating it, along with taking photos of the meals even though he was told not to. Margot wasn't supposed to be there, taking the place of another date Tyler had originally gotten a reservation for, and she throws the whole plan into disarray.
The mystery of Margot
Margot isn't actually named Margot (she's Erin from Boston), and Slowik sees through her nice clothes and uptight posture and knows she's working class and a fellow service worker. We get our first clues when one of the assistant chefs addresses Tyler by name and he's ecstatic, telling her, "He knew my name, babe!" and she points out that Tyler never asked the chef his name. She's acutely aware of the class divide and the difference between the elite clients and the service workers taking care of them, and even tells Tyler that it's hilarious that he wants the Chef to like him because he's paying Chef for a service. Margot is also on Tyler's payroll, accompanying him as a private escort. It would be just as pathetic for him to want her to genuinely like him, but he doesn't seem to understand.
"The Menu" is, at its core, a complicated dance between Margot and Slowik, both of whom are trapped in service to someone else. Slowik is trapped by the owner of Hawthorne (whom he kills), while Margot is trapped by Tyler, at least for this evening. Slowik takes her aside and asks her who she wants to die with: the "takers," or her "own breed". He also noticed that she recognized Richard, a former client of hers who shocked her by requesting for her to pretend to be his dead daughter while he masturbated. Margot decides that she doesn't want to die and refuses to side with either the too-dedicated restaurant workers or the absolutely awful clientele, though she will have to endure a lot of misery before she eventually escapes.
The menu as punishment
The courses throughout the evening are a set of punishments that grow increasingly intense. After a breadless bread course meant to both taunt them and highlight class inequality because bread is the "food of the poor," the diners are served chicken al pastor with some very special tortillas. The tortillas have been imprinted with images that highlight the guests' various crimes, including photos of Tyler taking photos after he was asked not to, the restaurants which Lillian's cruelty closed, and proof of the businessmen committing serious fraud and embezzlement. It's one of the most chilling moments in "The Menu," and marks when the diners finally realize they're actually in danger. Then it's made explicit when one of the assistant chefs dies by suicide as a part of the next course.
There are small punishments doled out alongside the meals as well. When Richard tries to escape, they cut off his ring finger and give his wife his wedding ring, a pretty symbolic gesture of his infidelity and her willingness to accept it. The male diners are given the chance to escape during another course called "Man's Folly," while the women are treated to some light snacking inside with one of the female chefs. It's a chance for the men to prove themselves, to try to help the women or stay with them, but they all bail save for Tyler, who just wants to see what the women get to eat. The final man to be caught is served a fancy egg as a reward, which is pretty darn funny since they find him hiding in the chicken coop (and he has behaved like, well, a chicken.) But what about the kitchen staff and Chef Slowik? Are they so free of blame that they can torture their guests without remorse? Not exactly.
A life in service to others
There are two courses dedicated to punishing the staff and Slowik: "The Mess" and "Man's Folly," and each plays into his larger commentary on class and power dynamics. In "The Mess," sous chef Jeremy (Adam Aalderks) dies by suicide in front of everyone to demonstrate the mess people make of everything in order to live in service to others. Slowik explains that his brains and splattered blood are like "the mess you make of your life, your sanity, your body." It's what you get for "devoting your life to people you will never know." He also comments that Jeremy would never be great, no matter how hard he worked at it, pointing out the futility of such devotion. Service work is extremely demanding and rarely rewarding, leading many in these industries to turn to drugs, alcohol, and other harmful ways of trying to cope, and Jeremy's desperation is depressingly relatable.
The other course, "Man's Folly," punishes Chef Slowik, who made sexual advances towards one of his female employees, Katherine (Christina Brucato), not once but twice, then treated her like she was invisible for months on end. As she explains: "Chef Slowik tried to f*** me. I refused. He tried again a week later. I refused. He kept me in the kitchen and refused to look me in the eye for eight months. He can do that, because he's the star. He's the man." She stabs him in the thigh with a pair of kitchen shears, mirroring the time he stabbed his own father in the thigh as a child because his father was beating his mother. Everything has been planned particularly, and every detail has meaning. Slowik has planned for them all to atone, including himself, though one guest has some extra atoning to do.
Tyler's Bulls***
Oh, Tyler. Obsessive, arrogant, spoiled Tyler. His behavior throughout the meal is atrocious to Slowik despite Tyler's fawning admiration, and eventually Slowik reveals that Tyler had known about the evening's plans all along. He was the only guest who knew about the murder-suicide pact made by the chefs, and yet he chose to bring Margot with him anyway instead of the date he had originally provided a name for. Slowik had likely vetted that date and discovered things about her past, about why she might be awful and deserving of death (to him, anyway). When you add the fact that Tyler ignored Slowik's rules about photos and his excitable comments about various ingredients, the great chef had to come up with a more personal punishment.
The next, unscheduled course, entitled "Tyler's Bulls***," has Slowik give Tyler a chef's jacket and run of his kitchen to make his own dish. He ends up making an absolute mess of the meal, serving undercooked lamb, with leeks and shallots in a butter sauce (with no seasonings!), and Chef Slowik roasts him for it. He tells Tyler that he is essentially his worst enemy, and says "you are why the mystery has been drained from our art." He then whispers something into Tyler's ear, and the crestfallen wannabe chef takes off his coat, then goes and hangs himself using his necktie.
Whose side are you on?
Margot is now "free," according to Slowik, though he only means from her servitude to Tyler. She is still on the side of the servants, and he even asks her to go fetch a barrel from the smokehouse, telling everyone that his maître d', Elsa (Hong Chau) was negligent and forgot to get it. Margot uses the freedom to try and escape, going to the chef's personal home to call for the coast guard. While there, she sees a photo of young Slowik as Hamburger Howie's employee of the month for August of 1987. She manages to make the call but Elsa finds her and the two get into a vicious brawl that ends with Elsa dead, gasping that she didn't forget the barrel as her final words. Slowik sent Margot on purpose, likely as a test of her loyalty. She comes back to the restaurant and a coast guard officer arrives for a quick, tense standoff before revealing that he's one of Slowik's employees, too.
Slowik furiously declares that Margot is a "taker," just like the other guests, then sets about making the final course. Instead, Margot challenges him, standing and clapping the same way he has before each course. She has a complaint:
"I don't like your food and I would like to send it back. You've taken the joy out of eating. When I eat your food, it tastes like it was made with no love. [...] You cook with obsession, not love. Even your hot dishes are cold. And the worst thing is I'm still f***ing hungry."
It's almost like this is the thing Slowik has been waiting to hear, as his eyes light up a bit and he asks her what she wants to eat.
One well-made cheeseburger
Remembering the smile on Slowik's face in his employee of the month photo, Margot orders a cheeseburger. She doesn't want anything fancy and definitely doesn't want something "deconstructed," she just wants a cheeseburger and some French fries. He asks her how she wants it (medium with American cheese) and gets to cooking, and for the first time in the film, it's clear that the food is being made with love. He genuinely wants her to like this cheeseburger because they have come to have a kind of understanding as service workers who have been mistreated, and she has become the one thing that he needed: a genuine guest. He watches her take the first bite like a proud child who just brought their mom breakfast in bed for the first time on Mother's Day, hoping and praying that she approves.
The cheeseburger, for what it's worth, looks like the best onscreen cheeseburger since Samuel L. Jackson uttered "This is a tasty burger" in "Pulp Fiction" back in 1994 (and you can learn to make it here!). It's gorgeous, with two smashed patties, grilled onions, American cheese, maybe some pickles, and crinkle-cut fries. It's an excellent burger and she tells him as much, but she also knows the final course is almost ready, so she asks if she can get the rest to go. It's her way of asking if she's fulfilled her duties and proven she deserves to live, and he brings her both a to-go box with her food and a goodie bag, letting her escape into the night. She gave him the only thing he truly wanted: to feel joy cooking one last time.
Eat or be eaten
The rest of the guests also get gift bags, but they are not allowed to leave. (The bags include house-made granola, one of owner Doug Verrick's fingers, and a copy of the night's menu.) They start getting out their credit cards, ready to pay and maybe exit, but then the chefs come out and put marshmallow ponchos and chocolate hats on them, turning them into giant s'mores. Each has earned their fate in some way, even the actor's spoiled assistant, who asks why she was chosen. Slowik asks what school she went to (Brown) and if she had to take out student loans (no), then informs her: "Sorry, you're dying." This is about givers and takers, after all, and it's clear that all she's done is take, take, take. Her actor boss just also happened to make a movie so bad that it genuinely depressed Chef Slowik, so bad luck I guess.
Slowik gives a speech to the guests about how they "represent the ruin of my art and my life," and now they get to "be a part of it," before lighting himself on fire, the flames bursting outward on booze poured on the floor. Then the chefs turn on the gas burners and it's all over.
Margot manages to make it to the little coast guard boat and get it started, though the engine dies a short way from the island. She sits and gets out her take-out cheeseburger and watches as Hawthorne burns, the only person who really gets to "enjoy" the s'mores, even if she can't literally eat the rich. She's spent so much of her life as a giver that she's allowed to take a little bit back, and it's oh so satisfying.