Tasting Menu has all the love ingredients

By Jenny Alvarez

Photo:Courtesy

Directed by Roger Gual (who co-wrote and co-directed SMOKING ROOM) from a script by Gual and Javier Calvo.  The film stars Jan Cornet, Claudia Bassols, Fionnula Flanagan, Stephen Rea, Timothy Gibbs, Marta Torné, Vicenta N’Dongo, Andrew Tarbet, Andrea Ros, Togo Igawa and Akihiko Serikawa. An Irish/Spanish co-production, Tasting Menu like all great ensemble dramedies centered on culinary delights, is a crowd-pleasing mishmash of relationships, feuds and broken dreams that are mended through the simple act of “breaking bread” and the universal appreciation of great food. According to some investigations this movie is based on the famed Catalonia elBulli restaurant, once run by chef Ferran Adrià. Various and assorted characters come to experience the last dinner being served at an illustrious and critically acclaimed seaside restaurant run by Chef Mar’s (Vicenta N’Dongo) and her partner Max (Andrew Tarbet). This film takes place on the last night of “the world’s best restaurant,” which is closing, but not before serving a final elaborate meal to a group of guests that includes a couple (Claudia Bassols and Jan Cornet) who booked a reservation a year in advance and who in the time since have split up. The script makes its thudding metaphorical point that sipping cocktails when someone’s drowning is simply not good especially for some of the characters whose indulgences have been not only culinary even emotional in which the food is fetishist’s delight and the night into this restaurant.