What “The Bear” Gets Right and Why That’s So Wrong
A week ago, Hulu released a new series called “The Bear”, a story about — well, what is it about? Restaurants? Chicago? Family? All of that. There’s much to unpack here, honestly. For someone who has worked in food service my entire career and is married to a chef, I can say the creater, Christopher Storer and the writers got so much right. That is why, in so many ways, it’s so wrong.
The show is entertaining and thoughtful to those uninitiated in the restaurant world. For us who have spent our careers here, fiction imitates life so precisely that much of the show is painful to watch. Like in the, “oh God, I can totally remember when that happened to me” sort of way. “Funny/Not Funny”.
Each scene and interaction provides a glimpse into the complexity of issues in the restaurant business. Beautifully shot, and tightly written, “The Bear” highlights the toxic but human aspects of restaurants, laid bare by the #MeToo movement, the pandemic, and social justice issues of the past two years. It exposes the tensions on a macro scale (from the community perspective) and a micro scale (interactions between workers). If you are wondering why restaurant workers left the field in droves after the pandemic, imagine what it would be like to work at The Original Beef of Chicagoland.
The premise of the show: Carmy is a celebrated chef who has come back to Chicago to take over his brother’s Italian sandwich shop after his brother commits suicide. The story is packed with tensions that make for a compelling story. The themes of confronting change — the change in communities, the changes that the restaurant industry must face to survive — are central. Nostalgia gets in the way of change. The chaotic nature of the restaurant world hasn’t changed in like a hundred years.
Richie, Carmy’s “cousin”, is steeped in nostalgia. He worked the front of the house for Mikey, Carmy’s brother, the chef. He’s the soft-hearted but foul-mouthed bully, resisting Carmy at every turn. He reminds me of many people in the restaurant business, who love the customers, love the free-wheeling space, but despise structure. He makes it toxic for everyone around him. Richie resists Carmy’s new sous chef, Sydney, who implements structure. His solution to unruly customers is to take his gun and empty a round into the air to stop the action. Richie waxes nostalgic about the Windy City, especially when the bar next door closes and is up for sale. He never went in there, he admits, but he loved the stability it gave the neighborhood.
I can appreciate Richie’s take on community. I know this intimately. I owned my own small shop, a rotisserie serving customers in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. We had regulars who loved our food, and people in the community we served. Once, I received a love note from someone who thanked us for providing comfort food for their dying partner. After we closed, I was stopped on the street by strangers asking when we would open another place. I knew our closing left a hole in the community. It wounded me.
I feel like the creators and writers got this so right, it reopened that wound for me. Beautiful shots of Chicago, of small neighborhood dives, of people going to work. The writers managed to work all this into dialogue — In one episode, Ebra, the cook from Somalia, reads aloud to the kitchen crew. A review of The Beef as dropped in the paper.
“Can the Windy City evolve without losing its true essence? We wonder at times if nostalgia clouds our true judgment and creates an angry desire for perfection with every turned over spot.”
Richie also perpetuates toxic culture to preserve “the delicate eco-system” that is the restaurant.
In one episode, where the toilet in the bathroom explodes, Richie is in the bathroom with Neil, the plumber/handyman (played by real-life chef, Matty Matheson). When Richie jokingly pumps the plumber as he bends down to fix the toilet, Neil protests.
“Isn’t this an HR violation?”
“I AM HR!” Richie responds. Oy. Funny/not funny.
Neil then takes the opportunity to ask Richie if they are hiring. They conduct a job interview right there in the bathroom, with Richie insulting Neil right and left until it breaks into a brawl on the dining room floor.
I’ve never seen this happen before in a restaurant, which is not to say it never has.
“The Bear” feels real because it peels back the curtain, exposing the complexity of issues facing the restaurant industry/restaurant workers. I could go on and on about how the creators and writers of “The Bear” get it right. From the verbal abuse to a line printer spewing out orders, sending the kitchen into chaos, the pastry cook who would rather experiment with his donuts, to Tina bringing her son into work after he’s suspended from school, the focus on the clock. Fuses getting blown, toilets exploding, pilot lights not working. Doing whatever it takes to get the food out. Carmy declaring that “paperwork just isn’t my jam.” as he deals with a delinquent IRS issue. There is nothing that you see or hear that doesn’t fit.
Details that, to the unintiated, fly by on the screen provide very real insight to the restaurant world. Episode 4 opens to strains of Wilco’s Impossible Germany, and the workers on their way to work. Manny rides the bus, Sydney takes the El, Carmy walks. This is the reality of the urban restaurant worker. They often travel long distances late at night or early in the morning to get to the job. Marcus, the pastry cook, decides to sleep at the restaurant in order to save money on his commute and be at work early. This is something the general public takes for granted. What happens when the city decides that the bus line you ride to work isn’t necessary anymore and shuts it down? Or the subway stops operating at midnight?
On the micro-level, I could go on for another 2000 words about how each character and their interactions expose the good and the bad of restaurant culture. I’ll stop here. Watch the show.
