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ReviewThe Dating Menu movie review: a drifter chef looks to connect in wistful romantic drama
Lo Chun-yip plays a chef who tries out a dating app and cooks for four very different women as he tries to get over a previous relationship
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3.5/5 stars
Trading the sun-drenched treks to some of Hong Kong’s most far-flung corners that featured in his idiosyncratic romantic comedy Far Far Away (2021) for the nocturnal intimacy of private domestic spaces, writer-director Amos Why (real name Wong Ho-yin) has created an ideal companion piece in The Dating Menu.
If the dates between Sham Ka-ki’s IT professional and five attractive women in that earlier film were quirkily amusing, the encounters between Lo Chun-yip’s free-spirited drifter and his four dating app matches here strike a very different tone: laid-back yet bittersweet in their search for human connection.
Lo plays Hark Lam, a talented chef whose instinctual refusal to face reality sees the Japanese omakase restaurant he opened with two long-time friends suffer financially in post-pandemic Hong Kong. His stubbornness also prevents him from getting over the girlfriend he broke up with three years ago.
Now living out of his compact camper van, Lam is encouraged by his pals to explore a dating app. But instead of moving on, he looks to the past, seeking to meet every “Zelda” he matches with – “Princess Zelda” being the username of his anonymous internet chat room crush 20 years ago.
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