From The Menu · 2022 · Reconstructed
Margot's Cheeseburger
Serve when
Fire it the moment Margot pushes the tasting menu away and orders a plain cheeseburger — and Slowik, for the first time all night, smiles like a cook again.
In the movie
Theatrical
- 01:30:15 Margot refuses the menu and asks for the one thing not on it: a cheeseburger, medium, with fries. Slowik makes it himself, and the joy of cooking something real and unpretentious visibly returns to him — it becomes her way out.
This is the key that unlocks the whole film. Every course before it has been a performance — clever, cold, contemptuous of the very idea that food should give pleasure. Margot's order cuts through all of it: she asks Slowik to make the thing that made him want to cook in the first place, "the food I ate as a kid," with love and nothing to prove. For one plate he's free, and so is she. It's the argument the whole movie has been making — that a cheeseburger made with care can beat the most decorated menu on earth.
Ingredients
Method
- Divide the chuck loosely — don't pack it. Season the outside generously with salt and pepper only.
- Get a cast-iron pan or flat-top screaming hot. Smash the patty thin and sear hard for a deep brown crust, about 2 minutes. Smash once, in the first 30 seconds, and never press again — every push after that just squeezes the juice onto the pan.
- Flip, lay on the cheese, and cook another minute to medium. Let the cheese melt fully.
- Build on a toasted bun: mustard, pickles, a little raw onion, the patty. Nothing it doesn't need.
- Serve with fries, hot, in a paper wrapper if you have one. Eat it happy.