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 a working-class lunch place, serving regular customers occupied in fields like transportation, street maintenance, and sanitation.
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." In season 4, Carmy explains his passion for serving food in a flashback. He tells his brother that "every one of our good memories—they happened in restaurants...people go to restaurants to be taken care of, right? They go to restaurants to celebrate, to relax, to not have to think about anything else for a minute. You know, people go to restaurants to feel less lonely."
The show is about "fire, meat, knives, pastries, bread, anxiety, fear, post-traumatic stress, death, and debt [... and] all the things that must be skillfully and thoughtfully combined to conceptualize, procure, make, and serve (good/great) food." The show is about how restaurants are also places consumed with "payroll, taxes, paperwork, hygiene, plumbing, dishwashing, the grease trap, dirty floors, health inspections." 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." The series connects with a larger culture through the inclusion of "highly curated" brands that "legitimize the show's validity with industry professionals. Examples of this include the jars of Kewpie Mayo in the walk-in, Fernet in the office, expensive Orwellian butter, Pepto Bismol, Tums, Al-Anon meetings, and prescription medications." Similarly, Helen Rosner of Chicagoland and The New Yorker wrote that the show's catalog of Chicago references ("Vienna Beef, Bill Murray, the hockey legend Denis Savard [...] Malört, Chicago's inexplicably beloved paint-varnish-like liquor") serve as metropolitan shibboleths.
Seemingly "trivial," backgrounded details ("a receipt, a hat, and a hot dog") construct a "taste‑based" sense of time and place. 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."
Culinary production Culinary producer Courtney "Coco" Storer is an experienced chef and sister of series creator Christopher Storer. She trained the actors on key dishes in her converted-garage catering kitchen. Chris Storer can also cook; Joel McHale initially knew Storer as the boyfriend of his Community costar Gillian Jacobs and "a really good chef." C. J. Capace is culinary co-producer. The culinary production team includes Nicole Biyani, chef Brian Lockwood, chef Justin Selk, Danielle Stefanick, Jeffrey Thomas, and Gabriel Wallace. Chris Zucchero (Chi-Chi) is second-generation owner of Mr. Beef, the restaurant that inspired the Original Beef. Matty Matheson (Fak) is a chef and cookbook author. Others contributors include Dave Beran, Daniel Boulud, Curtis Duffy and Amy Cordell of Ever and After, Tim Flores and Genie Kwon of Kasama, Thomas Keller, Rob Levitt of Publican Quality Meats, Malcolm Livingston II, Sarah Mispagel-Lustbader, Dylan Patel and Donnie Madia of Avec, Ana Posey and Dave Posey of Elske and Creepies, René Redzepi of Noma, produce liaison Samantha Rogers, Rosio Sanchez, and Alpana Singh.
The restaurant set at Cinespace is "outfitted with working gas stovetops and professional ovens so the cast can [...] feel hot and sweaty and can smell onions caramelizing (or burning), or a sauce boiling over." There is a culinary reference guide for every episode, in part because the Bear aspires to be a Michelin-level restaurant, which is "very precise in how they set things up." Cinematographer Andrew Wehde said of season 1, "We just kept shooting inserts and giving all that information to editorial, it created a lot of that kinetic energy...even down to the point that Jeremy Allen White, who's our lead, would cut celery and carrots and onions, and prep the bins" while they set up. Joanna Naugle told a film-editing podcast, "Sometimes we're like, 'We should use this shot where we [tilt] up from Carmy chopping [...] to be like, This is Jeremy! This isn't a double.'"
With a handful of caveats, the presentation of American restaurants has been deemed authentic. (Real restaurants would not put a Cambro of veal stock on the top shelf of the walk-in; a review would not be based on a one-off dish; walk-in fridges do not lock shut like that; there would also be zero stabbings, not so much yelling, and probably more casual sex.) Chris Storer said the production aspired to maybe "50 percent" accuracy on "chef stuff". Guest star Grant Achatz said in 2024, "Kudos to them for meticulously and thoroughly understanding the language, the movement, the stress, the anxiety, the pressure of running a restaurant like that." &
Season 1: The Original Beef of Chicagoland
The Original Beef of Chicagoland began as "a mom-and-pop sandwich shop" run by the Berzatto parents. As managed by Carmy's now-dead older brother Michael Berzatto (Jon Bernthal), the River North restaurant is a cozy, grungy "greasy spoon" with familiar food, stained walls, and a terrifying toilet. Carmy inherits the restaurant, displacing Mikey's best friend, their "cousin" Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who had been running the place, and with help from Sydney, begins reforming service, systems, and fare. With the stated goal of "I can't keep yelling at them every day," Carmy asks Syd to institute the kitchen brigade system, developed by Auguste Escoffier, who codified many traditional culinary practices, including the mother sauces, and used the "structure and duties of a military brigade" as the basis for a hierarchy of 20 specific cook positions. Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson) connects the dots between military and restaurant when he comments, "I was in a brigade once. Many people died." Carmy and Syd institute a process called recategorization: "Previously operating with a flat structure and unclear assignments [...] [the sous-chef] introduces daily routines like a pre-shift meeting, front-of-the-house walkthrough, and end-of-the-day review, fostering internal work coordination...the new work systems faced pushback, with one chef even responding, '' However, over time [...] [the changes] improved operations and enhanced team culture." These benefits contrast with the "cultural caricature" of the brigade, which "includes cooks screaming Yes, chef! in unison like soldier-hostages beset with Stockholm syndrome." Carmy – , meaning head chef, unless there is an executive chef Sydney – , answers only to head chef (by analogy, colonel to Carmy's brigadier general), supervises everyone else; a is a sauce chef; in season 2, per Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), Carmy becomes exec chef, and Syd is now CDC, and thus Tina is asked to train as Syd's sous, but Sydney is still referred to in public as "oh, Carmy's sous chef" Ebra – is a station chef, in Ebra's case, "grill master" Tina – preps "cold" dishes, and manages ingredients and supplies Marcus (Lionel Boyce) – is the in-house baker Season 1 revels in ostentatious food porn, both sweet and savory, replete with "glistening sauces, juicy slices of beef, meat always sizzling in the background." Edebiri once described Marcus and jelly-filled doughnuts as the show's "sexiest relationship."
Italian beef sandwiches topped with giardiniera An Italian beef sandwich is a very regional sandwich, less famous (pre-Bear) than its cousins the Philadelphia cheesesteak or the Florida Cuban. Chicagoans call them beefs. The Italian beef experience is "a long sandwich filled with thin-sliced marinated meat on a French roll drenched in juice and swaddled tightly in waxed paper or insulated foil wrap". French fries and a "cup of Italian ice served with a plastic straw that has a spoon on one end" are common accompaniments.
The sandwiches nod to Chicago's history as the 19th- and 20th-century "meat capital of the United States," when cowboys drove beef cattle from western ranch lands to the meat-packing districts that employed thousands of men at Fulton Market and at the Union Stock Yards on the South Side. Under the Italian beef program a Chicago community could stretch a little affordable meat to feed a lot of people. The beef is seasoned with oregano, basil, garlic, red and black pepper, and then "roasted slowly, partially submerged in beef stock." The beef should be shaved thin. Zucchero's recommended order is "hot, sweet, and juicy," meaning a beef with "hot peppers, which is the giardiniera; sweet peppers, which is bell peppers; and dipped." According to the Chicago Tribune, if the sandwich is "dipped" in the gravy ("jus"), it "often comes out looking like a waterlogged roll of paper towels." One Chicago writer described a beef as a "soggy Proustian gut volcano of past and present joy."
Richie says the Original Beef of Chicagoland has been doing things the same way for 25 years, and Jimmy Kalinowski (Oliver Platt) volunteers that the success of Ed Debevic's in River North inspired the Berzatto dad to open a restaurant. In season 2, there is a recipe for "giardiniera by Nonna" on index cards taped to the office bookshelf. means grandmother in Italian.
Family meal Carmy's first assignment to stagiaire ("staging, pronounced stahj-ing") Sydney is "Weyou're gonna make family," referring to "family meal," or "staff meal," for the restaurant employees. Family meal ensures "that everyone gets fed before their long and often hunger-inducing dinner shift. [At the Beef], the chefs take turns [...] to ensure cooking a giant dish for everyone to share." Sydney found unused bananas in the walk-in that Carmy had intended for "a play on a panettone" (a traditional Italian cake). She beef stew, fried plantains, coconut rice, and a fennel salad. Carmy took a bite during prep and declared "That's fire, chef," but did not sit down and eat with everyone else. This selectivity is common: "often chefs only pick at bits of food here and there to taste-test."
Family meal in "Brigade" is Ebra's chicken suqaar, a Somalian dish. One food writer commented that suqaar "makes perfect sense" given the ingredients on hand. In the season 1 finale, Tina asks "Who's on family?" and Carmy says, "I got it today, chef." He makes the "I love you dude" spaghetti. Executive producer Josh Senior said of the shots backed by Radiohead's "Let Down": "We always wanted to end it with a family meal...with these people together." In season 2's penultimate episode, an unseen character shouts over a shot of Sydney, "Family meal up front, y'all." The season 3 finale begins with a flashback to Thomas Keller paternally teaching Carmy how to make roast chicken for family meal at the French Laundry. Family meal on the day depicted in season 5 is beef, and fried Brussels sprouts.