Review: ‘The Menu,’ with Anya Taylor-Joy, serves up satire

“What are we eating? A Rolex?” So quips Margot in Mark Mylod’s “The Menu” as she waits with her date, Tyler, a devoted foodie who has landed them a reservation at the exclusive restaurant Hawthorne. Like the opening of Rian Johnson’s upcoming “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” an eclectic, upscale bunch gathers eagerly on a dock to be ferried to a private island. This is such rarified haute cuisine that entrees are promised that will not just represent food realms like protein and fungi but “entire ecosystems.” A paired pinot wine is said to feature “a faint sense of longing and regret.” Julian Slowik, Hawthorne’s celebrity chef, presides over the restaurant less like a cook than a military commander or, possibly, a god. But even as “The Menu” teeters unevenly in its third act and things get gruesomely less appetizing, its greasy last bites succeed in capturing one common aspect of molecular gastronomy: “The Menu” will leave you hungry.