Choose One
Come to think of it, a dating app is a bit like a restaurant menu. With Less choice.
The Dating Menu
Director: Frankie Chung, Amos Why • Writer: Frankie Chung, Amos Why, Kong Yu-sing
Starring: Lo Chun-yip, Rachel Leung, Renci Yeung, Crystal Cheung, Kearen Pang
Hong Kong • 1hr 42mins
Opens Hong Kong August 21 • IIB
Grade: B+
It’s hardly a news flash that Hong Kong’s once mighty dining scene ain’t all that any more. Sure, a few high profile locations like Caprice and Amber and L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon linger, but COVID went a long way to murdering the dining scene – and well beyond just the super-pricy celebrity chef spots too. People who dined out and paid real cash money to eat at these places left town, often permanently, and post-pandemic tourism trends don’t favour culinary exploration. It’s food court all the way, baby. And the Hongkongers that do dine out? They do it in Shenzhen now, where the HKD goes farther and everyone can have a return to the motherland card. And you thought service was bad before.
It’s against this backdrop that professional doomsayer Amos Why and first time director partner Frankie Chung Wang-kit set The Dating Menu | 廚師發辦, a – and hold on to your shorts – low-key optimistic romantic drama that could be seen as the spiritual sequel to Why’s Far Far Away. Once again an unassuming, average Hong Kong dude, this time omakase chef Lam Hark (Lo Chun-yip, Night King) embarks on a series of enlightening encounters with a cross-section of Hong Kong women that wind up telling him a lot about himself, and us a lot about the city. Calling Why a doomsayer may be hyperbole (it is hyperbole when We’re Nothing At All exists), but he’s definitely the reigning king of Hong Kong nihilism; his films (A Napping Kid, Everyphone Everywhere) see the hazards lurking around us. The Dating Menu sees the hazards, but also the joy, and it’s a nice change of pace for Why. Chung is clearly the secret sauce that brings a refreshing shot of hope to the story that Why might have left in the dust.
A lonely profession
Lam runs one of the many private kitchens that used to dot the landscape, a Japanese specialist who takes pride in his work despite his restaurant averaging about three people per night – and at least one of them his buddy and investor, James (Wong Yat-ho). Lam is also lonely, though he won’t admit it, stung by his girlfriend dumping him right before the pandemic, which only added to his isolation and stagnation. James and Lam’s devoted sous chef Monkee (Gladys Yuen) gently prod him to get himself on a dating app and get himself back out there, which swipes him right into four matches named Zelda.
In Lam’s teenaged memory, Zelda was a crush from his 2000-era chat room days, a girl he never met but who was always hungry at night, and who inadvertently inspired him to become a chef. Little says more about someone than what they eat so Lam sets up four dinner dates in which he’ll make the meal in the location of the Zelda’s choice. He meets an ultra-sophisticate who has nothing but criticism for Lam (Renci Yeung Si-wing); a single mother of two daughters in public housing (Crystal Cheung Man-ka, who was in Far Far Away); a hot shot lawyer with a clear idea of where she wants her life to go (Rachel Leung Yung-ting, who was also in Far in a similar role); and a villa-dwelling taitai (Kearen Pang Sau-wai) who’s stayed in Hong Kong at her insurance job while her husband works in the UK.
One of these women might be Lam’s Zelda. None might be his Zelda. It’s irrelevant because as Lam, Lo once again flicks his sensitive but unsure modern man switch (Memoirs of a Modern Motherhood, Time Still Turns the Pages) to embody a guy trying to find his way through the world, sometimes failing, always obsessing over it. The Zelda of his youth doesn’t exist, if she ever did, and Lo makes Lam’s determination to recapture that more confident, easier time in his life infuriating, heartbreaking and in the end accepting that he can’t. His growth is cleverly projected in the meals he makes, designed by a local chef (Paul Pang), but ironically not being about them. The Bear is everyone’s go-to restaurant movie/television these days but The Dating Menu more closely mirrors Jon Favreau’s Chef, in which fancy, fussy chef Casper abandons his fancy, fussy eatery for a food truck; Lam leaves his omakase art behind for a roving truck in Taiwan.
But the film is about the four formidable women too, who each get a moment to shine by throwing Lam’s insecurity back at him, finding their own kind of balance and reflecting Hong Kong’s constantly in-flux state of being. Yeung has become a master of DGAF energy over the last few years, Cheung is tremendous as a traumatised woman who’s still keen on romance, but terrified of taking a chance, and Pang radiates a kind of pragmatism she wishes she could ignore. Leung is the key player, the enigma who might have the answers Lam is looking for – but who might also be talking a big game – and each is shot in a unique tone temper by Leung Ming-kai that put Lam, and us, in their headspace. This is Why’s most assured film, or half at least, and its nicely calibrated, grown-up emotionalism without syrup bodes well for Chung’s sophomore effort.