I’m reviewing the food-snobbery-will-kill-you comedy “The Menu,” never having eaten at, well — name the Michelin-starred restaurant and I haven’t eaten there. Some day. When that cost-of-living raise finally arrives.
But satire, even wobbly satire, doesn’t require firsthand knowledge of a subject. Pretentious foodies are like pretentious anybodys, with cultural critics high among them: They can’t hear themselves speak, not really, because they probably wouldn’t speak that way if they could. Insider language is a reliable satirical target. It stimulates the ear to hear words unthinkable a few years ago: “mouthfeel,” for one.
In director Mark Mylod’s “The Menu,” this is the premise whipped up by screenwriters Seth Reiss and Will Tracy (“Succession”): Twelve people, having paid $1,250 apiece, travel to a 12-acre private island. There, a famously secluded fine-dining establishment entices, punishes, delights and, soon enough, horrifies the diners who paid dearly for the “experience.”
