Food of The Bear

How it feels

Two elite chefs work to save a troubled family sandwich shop in Chicago after the pandemic. They struggle with debt, trauma, and high pressure as they try to transform the restaurant into a fine dining spot.

tensestressfulcharacter-drivengrittyurgentemotionalfast-pacedunflinching

What happens

Food is central to the storytelling and relationships on the series The Bear, a 2022–2026 episodic television show based on the world of U.S. restaurants after the COVID-19 pandemic. The two main characters, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), are elite chefs who work together to save the Berzatto family restaurant, a troubled Italian beef sandwich joint, and launch a new high-end dining destination called The Bear. Sydney was trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and identifies Carmy as the "best CDC at the best restaurant in the whole United States of America." The Original Beef of Chicagoland, however, is not fancy, it is "for the everyman on their lunch break. It is also a cornerstone of the community, more frequented by serious regulars than by first-timers." Season 1 centers on quick-service sandwiches, hot dogs, and doughnuts. Beginning in season 2, the chefs, together with friends and family, transform "the sauce-splattered sandwich bar into the show's titular fine-dining venture." The show is about "fire, meat, knives, pastries, bread, anxiety, fear, post-traumatic stress, death, and debt...[it] could be described as character-driven...but The Bear is also equally or even to a greater degree about...all the things that must be skillfully and thoughtfully combined to conceptualize, procure, make, and serve (good/great) food." The cinematography and film editing emphasizes artistic, emotional, and manual labors through "tight close-ups of the objects that are also central to the storyline in that without them the action could not occur. Plastic containers, blue labels, olive oil, salt, herbs, flour, mixers, pans, clean surfaces, clocks, walk-in refrigerator, electricity, stoves, and hands to combine, cut, sprinkle, drizzle, sear, and boil. The food could not be cooked, tasted, and eaten with relish without the human and non-human assemblages." On the whole, The Bear "positions individual dishes as signifiers of family histories and vessels of the characters' creative anxiety, as well as staple elements of Chicago's urban culture." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• The Bear (2022)
• Chicago Med (2015)
• Boiling Point (2023)
• Restaurant: Impossible (2011)
• Chicago Fire (2012)
• Snowfall (2017)
• Shameless (2011)
• 9-1-1 (2018)