Menu production designer Ethan Tobman on simulating ‘ecosystem-harvested’ materials for the island restaurant – production value

“I loved making films, and from a young age I loved creating really hyper-realistic works of art,” says production designer Ethan Tobman. “Painting and sculpture fascinated me as much as film, and I never imagined that the two could cross professionally.”

Markus Mylods The menu takes place in an exclusive island restaurant, where chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a menu full of shocking surprises for a pre-selected group of guests. His dinner plans are thrown into disarray when an unexpected guest, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), attends the event.

The script for The menu Tobman brought in and said it was one of the few scripts he read a second time after finishing the first. “It really captured something I’d never seen before, which was the five-to-seven-act structure of a pre-arranged meal at an upscale restaurant, followed by the five-to-seven-act exposition of ‘ a narrative script. I thought it was very, very clever.”

In designing the restaurant, Mylod gave some direction as to how it should feel emotionally, but gave Tobman more freedom in presentation. “Mark knew how he wanted the restaurant to feel emotionally – cool, unsettling, unpredictable, very strong geometry, Scandinavian and Scandinavian influences – and one of the most inspiring things he told me was that the restaurant should feel like it should be as if it came from the ecosystem.” In his approach, Tobman decided to treat these harvested materials like a chef: “So wood is blanched, it’s charred, it’s stained with spices.”

During the design, Tobman was able to work with chef Dominique Crenn to figure out how a luxury restaurant of this caliber should function. “Working with Dominique Crenn, our executive chef, was one of the most unpredictable highlights of my career,” he says.

Click on the video above to watch the full interview.