On ‘The Bear,’ the Food Is More Than Just Mouth-Watering

When a person microwaves Easy Macs all day, every day, we assume they might be a lazy college student. When someone can whip up 10 hearty Thanksgiving dishes without a single speck of gravy landing on the carpet, we’d probably think they’re the leader of the family. If someone can manage to meal-prep fresh salads for every week, we assume they’re budget-conscious and organized. And if a person spreads creamy garlic Boursin cheese into a French omelet before sprinkling potato chips on top, it’s easy to label them as a goddamn genius. (Yes, this is a shoutout to Sydney, played by Ayo Edebiri, from The Bear.)

Be it the way we prepare it, eat it, or examine it in our lives, food can say a lot about character. The aforementioned people who spend their days chomping on Easy Mac or perfectly portioned salads are only tropes. But you probably can envision them—a college student with an unmade bed and an unkempt dorm room; a middle-aged mom with an apron on and a dozen kids to wrangle on Thanksgiving day—just by what they were cooking.

Of course, a college student can meal-prep (I did!), and a mom with a dozen children can live on microwavable Easy Mac (my mom and I did!). But the way food does reflect character is something The Bear really leans into in its marvelous second season. For the cook staff working at The Bear, Chicago’s biggest fictional restaurant, the food they create and eat is how we learn more about who they are as people.

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Season 2 of The Bear sees Carmy Berzatto’s (Jeremy Allen White) family joint, The Original Beef, undergoing a major overhaul to become a more upscale restaurant called The Bear. As the restaurant gets a facelift, so does The Bear, which spends its sophomore season developing more than just Carmy as the lead character. This season expands on the folks working alongside him, like Sydney, Marcus (Lionel Boyce), and Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas). And even though the restaurant is closed for renovations for much of the season, the show finds a way to expand on these characters by blending new food into their storyline.

Some of the characters, like Carmy’s “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and sister Natalie (a.k.a. Sugar) (Abby Elliott), don’t cook as much as they assist with the general upkeep of The Bear restaurant. They’re the front-of-house workers—meaning that they work with the servers, the hosts, and the diners rather than the food itself. Their stories aren’t told as much through food itself as they are through the service of shuttling food out to hungry guests.

Our favorite back-of-house workers, though, have their storylines whisked, melted, and shaken together by a series of meals that relate to the core of their character. Not only does The Bear make itself even more delicious in the process of highlighting these distinct dishes, but the series is also able to delve into the complexities of its characters in a richer way by doing so.

Marcus: The Dessert Chef

At first glance, precision appears to be the name of the game in Marcus’ Copenhagen storyline. It is—but rather it’s about how to be precise when there are so many different components in play. In order to achieve perfect companionship (either in a specific dish, in the kitchen, or, at times, just in life), one must be rather exact in any interaction.

In Episode 4, Marcus’ first job while staging under top chef Luca (Will Poulter) in Denmark is to slide a nut sliver into a flowery dollop of cream. He can’t get it. Marcus tries over and over again to fit the slice in perfectly, and even when he does so, he places the next piece in the wrong order. “Always clockwise,” Luca instructs him.

There’s a lot going on in Marcus’ life inside and outside of the kitchen. The sweet guy is trying to balance a restaurant opening (and the training that goes along with that) with his mom’s hospitalization. He also seems to have quite the crush on Sydney—which, along with the issues of working with a romantic interest, would make all the hysteria of falling in love into one big mess for Marcus.

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To a certain extent, constructing desserts with Luca serves as a good distraction for Marcus. But to the same degree, making desserts allows him to fully embrace his life creatively, using food as a way to express himself. Marcus learns how to be precise—then, using that precision, he starts to string his life together. Luca teaches Marcus how to open up in the kitchen; when Marcus heads back to Chicago, he does exactly that.

Following Carmy’s idea to reclaim his family’s cannoli recipe as his own, Marcus constructs a savory dessert with additions from most members of the team. The Bear’s cannoli will have a parmesan shell stuffed with mortadella and cream, garnished with a bit of caviar—all bits of Carmy, Sydney, and Marcus’ lives cooked together. Though Marcus has a lot on his plate, he is working towards mastering the art of precision: what goes where, how to approach people and ingredients in the kitchen, and how to infuse his own life into the mix.

Sydney: The New Chef

Sydney wants to take on more responsibility with the opening of The Bear. But by Episode 3, “Sundae,” that decision proves to be a bit of a mistake.

The young chef struggles to refine her palate over the course of “Sundae,” which sees Sydney venturing around Chicago, hunting for fresh inspiration. But just like she can’t poach chefs from other restaurants, she can’t pickpocket their plating, butchers, and ideas and pass them off as her own. All of this food sends Sydney into an existential crisis: These dishes are so delectable (though we can’t try them, seeing them on screen is enough to convince me that the breakfast sandwiches, dumplings, and pork bellies Sydney tries are top-notch) that Sydney worries she can’t hone a reputable palate and, in turn, won’t earn herself a seat at the table in the restaurant biz.

After she visits Kasama, Avec, Lao Peng You, and other local high-end spots in Chicago, Sydney’s mind is thrown into a whirlwind of creativity, but it’s all a mess. She envisions pasta—tortellini with parmesan. No, orange ravioli with spinach. No, fried ravioli with spinach sauce. Suddenly, instead of food, we see what’s going on in Sydney’s mind: a montage of shapes and other bizarre images. So much is happening at once, and she can’t seem to streamline any of it into a dish with any purpose.

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The best part of this montage takes us through nostalgic points in Sydney’s life (with stellar real childhood photos, thanks to Edebiri) as she tries to remember the dishes that stuck with her. But plucking food from her memories—like mall dumplings, Icees on a hot Chicago day, or big bowls of bolognese—doesn’t drum up any new ideas for dishes.

What ends up being Sydney’s best dish does not come from her own appetite. She finds her footing in the finale when Sugar asks for an omelet. Sydney whips up a French omelet smeared with garlicky Boursin cheese and freckled with potato chips. I’d like one myself. But that’s beside the point: Sydney has finally found her creative voice. She realizes that her part of The Bear’s menu should not be based on her preconceived notions about fine dining, but on what comes to her in the moment—like Season 1’s cola-braised short rib and risotto.

Plus, the idea of cooking an egg is pretty loaded: It has a hard, inedible outer shell; the goods are the smooth, runny liquids on the inside. A lot of Sydney’s arc this season relies on the fact that Carmy is closing himself off to her—really, she needs to continue to crack her own outer shell and be vulnerable with him (and everyone else) to keep the kitchen, and her own creativity, moving.

Tina: The Maternal Chef

Tina isn’t the head of the kitchen—based on her reaction to Sydney naming Tina her sous, though, she probably feels like she’s at the top of the food chain. But she’s certainly the most maternal of the bunch. She’s the mama chef. Sydney is in charge, and yet, Tina oversees Sydney as if she were a student.

We don’t see Tina cook an awful lot compared to the more major characters. She doesn’t have a standalone episode like Marcus and Richie, but her character does get quite a bit of attention in Episode 5, “Pop.” Tina has been sent off to culinary school to refine her skills as The Bear’s sous. She is quieter at school than she is at the restaurant. The place is full of “Sydneys”—i.e., bright-eyed, bushy-tailed chefs who are eager to please and win a job in the culinary world. Tina, on the other hand, already has a job. She has experience. She’s only doing this for the betterment of her restaurant.

But Tina forgets to bring her knife to work in “Pop,” meaning she’ll be stranded without any cleaver when she runs to culinary school after working in the kitchen at The Bear. Carmy bequeaths his knife to her, as if he were knighting her with a sword. She takes the Berzatto family knife to class, using it to debone and prepare filets out of a fresh fish.

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The fish is a meaningful symbol in The Bear, especially considering the episode after “Pop” is called “Fishes.” For every Christmas Eve dinner, the Berzatto family prepares “The Feast of the Seven Fishes,” a traditional Italian-American meal that brings seven seafood dishes to the table. For Carmy, this meal awakens fraught memories of his mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) slamming pots and pans around the kitchen, verbally abusing Sugar, and driving her car through the Berzatto home’s front door. Donna has since estranged herself from her son and daughter.

But Tina’s presence offers a new maternal figure to Carmy and Sugar. A fish can represent many things, but most importantly, with Tina, it signifies motherhood, stability, balance, and tranquility. She not only trains the younger chefs in the kitchen, but Tina also has no problem peacefully deboning the fish and, later on, tackling The Bear’s “Feast of the Seven Fishes”-inspired menu offering on the restaurant’s opening night. When Donna shows up that same night, she ultimately abandons both Carmy and Sugar without ever setting foot in the restaurant. Instead, it’s Tina who talks Carmy down as he traps himself in the fridge afterward.

Tina has become the mother of The Bear. With Carmy’s knife now in her possession, his gift to the new sous of the restaurant, Tina spends her first night in this new position serving up the Berzatto’s new Feast of the Seven Fishes.

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