‘The Menu’: We’d Brave a Terrifying Tasting Menu to Eat at This Gorgeous Restaurant

By Emily Zemler

The food industry is absolutely skewered in The Menu, the new thriller from Succession director Mark Mylod. The film sets its sights on the world of fine dining by focusing on a destination restaurant somewhere in the Pacific Northwest that becomes the site of satirical horrors. The island-bound establishment called Hawthorn is so integral to the story that production designer Ethan Tobman designed and built it almost in its entirety in Savannah, Georgia. The majority of the film’s action, which follows a group of diners as they indulge in an increasingly chaotic tasting menu from Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), takes place within the walls of the dining room and kitchen.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult play a couple who dine at the high-end, somewhat creepy restaurant.

“I always joke about this because it was similar to when I designed the movie Room, which has such an iconic, singular set that you’re stuck inside,” Tobman tells AD. “It’s similar in some narrative ways to The Menu.” The script gave only one sentence of direction for how the restaurant should look: austere, vaguely Scandinavian, cold. “I immediately had some ideas for how I wanted to design it. I walked into the first meeting with maybe 15 reference photos and they all ended up in the movie.”

Those reference photos included paintings by Francis Bacon and John Currin, which are “studies in grotesquery, excess, and worship,” as well as images from episodes of Netflix’s Chef’s Table. Once Tobman realized that most restaurants are relatively bland in style, and that the interior design comes second to the food, he began expanding his references. He looked at synagogues and churches, particularly the modern ones from ’60s brutalism, and even incorporated a cross into the architecture of the kitchen’s back wall to amplify the feeling that Slowik is being deified. The chef’s aloof, arrogant persona is apparent in all of the design, which is relatively stark.

Hawthorn’s design may be sleek and beautiful, but it also imparts a sense of coldness and foreboding.

“We wanted it to feel like Chef took the elements of the island into his construction of the space,” Tobman says. “So every material that you see in that restaurant, theoretically, he has harvested from the natural resources of the island, just the way he supposedly does in all of his food. The problem with Slowik is he's so fascistic in his approach to controlling the elements that he has twisted and bent nature to the point where he’s perverted it.” In the end, there’s no semblance of the island in the restaurant. It’s become cold, asymmetrical, and uncomfortable while retaining a distant sense of perfection.

Hawthorn’s exterior incorporates elements of the island into its design, which has a Scandinavian sensibility.

By Paola Singer

By Elizabeth Stamp

By Elizabeth Fazzare

As the team constructed the exterior of Hawthorn on location on Hampton Island, Georgia, and the interior on a soundstage, Tobman wanted to bring in elements of real-world restaurants. Hints of now-closed Swedish restaurant Fäviken, Catalonian restaurant El Bulli, Sonoma, California, restaurant French Laundry, Chicago’s Alinea, and Copenhagen restaurant Noma can be seen throughout Hawthorn. El Bulli’s famed backlit spice rack was recreated in great detail, while French Laundry’s garden inspired the kitchen garden.

The backlit spice rack in Hawthorn’s kitchen was inspired by the real-life spice rack at El Bulli.

One of Tobman’s small-scale replicas of Hawthorn.

Tobman also worked closely with Dominique Crenn, the three-Michelin-starred chef of San Francisco restaurant Atelier Crenn, who was a consultant on the film. In speaking with Crenn and her team, it quickly became apparent that the Hawthorn kitchen had to actually function for the film’s action to feel seamless and authentic. Tobman purchased working kitchen appliances for the interior set build and acquired a custom-built open-flame stove from Savannah company Grills by Demant after seeing a similar one in local restaurant Common Thread. Although the kitchen is slightly larger than a typical restaurant kitchen, it is notably realistic.

Crenn was so impressed with Tobman’s set design, in fact, that she hired him to redesign Atelier Crenn, which is expected to open at the end of January. “It’s a real ‘art imitates life imitates art’ story,” Tobman says. “But if I can get a table now and then, it might be worth it..”

By Paola Singer

By Elizabeth Stamp

By Elizabeth Fazzare

The restaurant’s kitchen was designed to evoke a church, with a subtle cross on the back wall. All of the appliances actually worked, so the cast could appear to be preparing the dishes in real time.

Unlike at Atelier Crenn, horrors await within Hawthorn. So although the restaurant has an aspirational quality, with custom-made tables and chairs, there is also a lingering feeling of trepidation inherent in the construction. The restaurant’s massive doorway, which pivots open and closed, hints at what’s to come from the horror-tinged plot. Tobman was inspired to create the hefty door by an experience at a spa in Utah.

The restaurant’s dining room was carefully arranged for the film’s action. The tables and chairs were custom-built, and the intricate ceiling was inspired by Japanese Zen gardens.

Receive Insider Tips from AD Designers at the Colors Trends Workshop

“We’ve all had that moment where we walk into a room and have that weird fight or flight moment of, ‘Should I have come in here?’” Tobman says. “There was a very large door that made too much of an effort to close on a central axis and just slammed a little too loud. I thought, Oh my God, I'm gonna die.” The foreboding architectural feature was the perfect way to impart this scary feeling on the audience. “You want them to feel the architecture emotionally.”

By Paola Singer

By Elizabeth Stamp

By Elizabeth Fazzare

Like the kitchen, the smokehouse evokes a church. The building was inspired by the drying process at Fäviken, Magnus Nilsson’s former restaurant in Sweden, although it doesn’t look similar in style.