Culinary ace takes over sandwich shop in ‘Bear’
Chicago is a major food town, from pricey fine dining to modest neighborhood joints that hit the spot, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen the sweaty, cacophonous kitchen dynamics of the latter so richly and lovingly portrayed as they are in “The Bear,” a darkly comedic drama that takes its inspiration from a local staple: Mr. Beef.
On the show, this Italian beef sandwich shop in the River North neighborhood is simply called The Original Beef of Chicagoland. But the exterior shots certainly look as if they were shot at Mr. Beef. And a crew member told me that production designers all but rebuilt the interior of Mr. Beef on a soundstage.
After watching all eight episodes, it might be one of my favorite shows of the year. (This is one of those FX productions for Hulu; it’s not airing on the cable channel, but the entire season is available on the streamer.) Front and center are the travails of a young chef named Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, who sometimes goes by the nickname Bear. Here’s a guy who made a name for himself in the fine-dining world and he’s very good. As in, James Beard and Food & Wine awards good. But now he’s back home in Chicago, running the family restaurant months after his brother Mikey killed himself.
“The Bear” doesn’t sugarcoat the details, but trauma isn’t what comes to mind watching this collection of oddballs. The kitchen staff is thrown together by circumstance but something more begins to bind them together: The opportunity to be creative and still earn a paycheck. Creator Christopher Storer
and co-showrunner Joanna Calo have wisely avoided ladling in romance or other soapy storylines to gum things up. This is a slice-oflife — raw, shabby, cacophonous, funny and beef-juice splattered — about the work of work. And specifically the ecosystem of a restaurant kitchen where sharp elbows are the norm and everyone is talking over one another.
Grief hangs over the place like a bad smell nobody wants to acknowledge and Carmy, played by “Shameless” alum Jeremy Allen White, is looking to metaphorically air things out with some new ideas of his own. Using his culinary expertise, he wants to up their game with a more gourmet approach: Ambitious flavors, farmer’s market produce and a standardized organizational
chart.
First things first: Hire a sous chef. She arrives in the form of Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), who is smart, eager and a realist. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America and has worked in fine dining restaurants, but coming into the chaos that is The Original Beef of Chicagoland is like baptism by deep fryer. Carmy holds her to a higher standard, which creates all kinds of tension. They have terrific peerto-peer chemistry that is tested time and again.
There will be blood! And yelling! So much yelling! But there’s also camaraderie and legitimate warmth threaded throughout the show. The quiet conversations out back during a lull. The intense focus on food prep (gorgeously shot; Storer and Calo are
directors here as well). The thrilling jolt of creative collaboration and getting a new recipe just right.
White is wonderfully disheveled in “The Bear,” putting his sad-eyed countenance to good use as a guy with tremendous confidence in the kitchen but who’s fumbling everywhere else. At this point, his family has been whittled down to a lovely but exasperated sister (Abby Elliott) and her perfectly dorky husband (Chris Witaske).
There’s also longtime frenemy Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who is simultaneously awful and deeply loyal and the kind of guy who tells Carmy: “I do not care what you did up in Napa with your tweezers and your foie gras — you got no idea what yer doin’ here!” He’s a dirtbag
complete with dirty fingernails, and although he and Carmy aren’t related, they call each other “cousin.”
Aside from these two (and a hanger-on handyman played by real-life Canadian chef Matty Matheson, who is also a co-producer), the kitchen is staffed primarily by Black and Latinx and Afro-Latinx people, which feels like an accurate and important detail about line cooks and dishwashers in many restaurants across the city. Not everyone in the kitchen gets a fleshed-out portrayal, but they all feel as if they are fully realized people with their own lives.
Other key figures in the kitchen include longtime veteran Tina (Liza ColonZayas) who puts Sydney through the ringer before realizing, oh wait, these new recipes are legit and it’s pretty rewarding to make them. The sweet and curious Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is in charge of making the bread rolls but is inspired to become a full-on pastry chef under Carmy’s new plan. Other recognizable faces show up for more cameos: Joel McHale, Amy Morton, Oliver Platt.
According to FX, the show’s creators aren’t Chicagoans. But the attention to detail is noteworthy, and it gives the show a palpable Chicago feel. What’s missing is any sense of what the shop’s regulars think of Carmy’s tinkering. And there’s a turn of events in the final episode involving stashed money that doesn’t fully make sense.
But the show’s approach to dark humor won me over. While catering a suburban birthday party for a family friend, an old man approaches Carmy and says: “Carmen, is that you? I thought you killed yourself ?” Carmy pauses. “No, sir. That was my brother.” The old man shrugs and walks away.
“The Bear” is a study of people coming together, sometimes begrudgingly, and how complicated that can be. It doesn’t always work out. This is a show created by people who recognize that our lives are a group project.
When regular people — not a special ops unit, or a group of superheroes — figure out a way to work toward a common goal? There’s nothing better.
Author and activist Dean Spade once said: “What do I want to spend the rest of my life doing? Being fully alive, being with other people, being in it together, taking risks, being really, really caring (and) learning to love people even if they annoy me.”
That’s “The Bear” in a nutshell.