Food of The Bear

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.