The Bear is the rare piece of art that, at long last, accurately represents the unfiltered experience of what the restaurant industry is really like. As someone who has split their time between that world and media, The Bear changed my conception of what I thought was possible, after decades of saccharine Hollywood approved kitchen narratives.
In season two, the show moves on from the wrangling order in the confines of The Beef’s humble sandwich shop kitchen, to reimagining what the restaurant is entirely, as a fine dining restaurant. In doing so, it captures that the only thing more stressful and obnoxious than operating a restaurant is opening one, and just as the first season was the definitive account of what running a restaurant is like, season two serves as the definitive guide to beginning one.
As someone who has been intimately involved with the process multiple times, I once again felt addressed and catered to directly. There is nothing quite like building out a restaurant—each time out is different and each experience has so much to teach you. You are up against this definitive end date, at the mercy of people and a city that moves at its own pace. And at the same time you have a budget that is dwindling every week, and a new plumbing issue or electrical issue or shipping issue that is forcing you to recalculate on the fly. It’s a row of dominoes ready for a slight gust to tilt all your best laid plans to the ground.
Inevitably, you will fail, then get back up and re-start the process. And this is what The Bear is about: the struggle to do your best in life, and in work, and to keep coming back for the people, and the work that you’ve dedicated your life to even after you come up short. Here is a SPOILER PACKED guide to all the industry terms and ideas this great show employs to drive home that message. Let it rip.
Amperage – A measure of electric current. Every space has a maximum allotment of electricity your panel receives and can distribute to your appliances throughout the space. If you exceed it, you can blow a circuit or blackout your panel. In episode 5 of season 2, the restaurant faces a dilemma: there isn’t enough power for the HVAC (heating and air conditioning unit), a major amperage suck. Amperage is determined by the size of the electrical cable feeding power into your space (either from a powerline, or often in cities, from an in-ground cable) so you either need to make do with what you have, or change it, which in New York means getting Con-Ed to come and dig into the concrete to switch out a thicker cable.
Barkeepers Friend – Tina and Sydney break out this go-to industrial cleaner at one point to salvage badly distressed aluminum pots and pans.
Bookkeeper – Carmy’s sister Natalie—frequently referred to as “Mom” or “Sugar”— becomes a crucial and invaluable resource in the buildout process. The knower of code, the application filler, the bank account watchdog. Abby Elliot plays the thankless but essential role of pragmatic disciplinarian. In the first episode Carmy does a hilariously bad job attempting some bar napkins accounting. He’s both way over and way under what things actually cost, which is the point: Carmy has no fucking clue what he’s doing, which is why the team desperately needs a Natalie. Elliot comes off the bench as an underutilized player from the first season to what is arguably, well deserved third billing.
Budget – One of the first shots of the season is Natalie doing the books. During a renovation it’s hard to understate how important your dollar amount is— that dwindling number in your bank account looms over every creative decision you make. Season 1 ends with Carmen discovering the stash his deceased brother Micheal hoarded for him in tomato cans to open his dream restaurant. It’s $300,000, which is an incredibly reasonable sum. They end up burning through $800,000 with no operating capital, which sounds a lot like the work of a high end LA food consultant setting money on fire—or just a bit of dramatic heightening because you can build what they end up with for far less.
Certificate of Occupancy – Theoretically it’s just a permit that states what the legal use of a building is, but it’s a huge time consuming and expensive red-tape wrapped pain in the ass when you’re in a city full of these old buildings that predate the certification and have been grandfathered in, until you want to fuck with the usage of a space and create a new job in its bin.
Chef de Cuisine – This season is all about evolution. Every member of the season 1 brigade takes a step up, and every journey matters (including Ebrahim, the dishwasher Carmy attempts to elevate, but rejects his efforts and just wants to keep washing dishes, an honest and realistic bit of self reflection you see in kitchens often). Sydney’s journey is moving from Carmy’s side as a sous to the head of the kitchen. The “Chef” of a kitchen in a system like The Bear’s is more a spiritual leader, closer to a business owner than what we typically associate with the work of a chef. Sydney is stepping into management and needs to learn to take that next step as a leader, which she does through her study of former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski. She needs to learn how to inspire and lead by example. We see her doing this with Tina, a touching update of a working relationship that has evolved from season one between the young mentor and her once antagonistic, seasoned mentee.
Chocolate Banana – Uncle Cicero’s madeleine. There’s an aside during the Christmas episode in which he expounds on the transportive memory of scent, which creates a pretty walloping punch as the season finale winds down. (We all have them.:Mine is a blue raspberry ice cream studded with marshmallow and aptly named “Smurf” on offer at a small roadside creamery in the Hudson Valley, that when compressed by a metal scoop onto a wafer cone, actually smells and tastes exactly like both summer and childhood.)
Commis – Or kitchen assistant in the brigade, the lowest rung, or “kitchen bitch” as they’re often (or used to be often) referred to.
Culinary School – Maybe the most insane part of the season. The Bear sends Ebrahim and Tina to culinary school and continues to pay them hourly to do it. I did a quick Google search and found that the Kendall College of Culinary Arts Tina attends charges about $8,400 for tuition, and you can get a certificate within a year. Tina seemingly spends two and half months, and Ebrahim drops out. So it’s hard to gauge but you can imagine a bill well upwards of $20,000. It’s wild when you consider both Ebrahim and Tina would be better served just working intensively alongside Sydney and Carmy, who actually finally have time and space to lock in and tutor them.
DBA – Or doing business as. Most businesses have an LLC, and sticklers could force you to register a DBA which is often different from the name of the LLC. But a larger point is when you move into a space, you inherit all those space’s problems. Violations from the ‘80s related to a job that was started and never finished? Somehow you have to figure out how to cure that if you want your plans stamped 40 years later, or a liquor license, or any number of things any sanctioned state body can do to fuck you up, assigning you blame for something you had absolutely nothing to do with for a time before any of this shit was digital and everything was done with a wink, a bribe and a handshake. The answer is always throwing time you don’t have and money you don’t have at the problem with an expeditor and any number of remora that have attached themselves to the underside of this massive, bullshit-fueled bureaucratic superstructure.
Deep Dish – In episode 7, Richie goes to a fine dining restaurant to get indoctrinated into the cult of hospitality at the most extreme level. At one point we see Richie reading Will Guidara, the FOH psycho deity formerly of Eleven Madison Park, and his do everything philosophy is clearly the guiding spirit of the episode.
As evidence of their maniacal dedication to the guest experience, a table requests deep dish pizza, so Richie sprints to a bar called Pequod’s to grab one, which the chef cuts in rings, toasts, and dresses with basil oil and micro basil. I’m pretty sure the moment is based on an old legend that on request, Eleven Madison Park once ran across Madison Square to the original Shake Shack kiosk to grab burgers for a guest.
Fire Suppression – The crew needs their old fire suppression system to pass an inspection in order to open the restaurant. In an open flame kitchen it’s a necessary safeguard: A sensor that, in the event of a fire that gets out of control, will shut off the gas line and spray a fire extinguishing goo composed of sodium potassium bicarbonate.
In every buildout you always run into one nagging issue that threatens to sink the entire enterprise, one wholly unique to the particular issues of your space that you’ve never dealt with before and will likely never deal with again. In this case (which only kind of makes sense depending on how hard you want to think about it), the culprit was Michael, overriding the fire suppression system in an attempt to potentially torch the building and collect the insurance money by virtue of “Jewish Lightning”, leaving the system with a mystery gas leak that caused two inspection failures. In a moment of inspired brilliance, Matty Matheson’s Fak realizes what happened, and fixes it.
The Fridge Guy – Something Sydney rightfully gets on Carmy’s ass for is the entirety of the second half of the season: an issue with a walk-in door handle he never gets on top of. There’s a special kind of idiocy certain people have where they can handle a large number of complicated and stressful issues at the same time, but always seem to have one nagging blind spot for what should be a simple and easy fix. The Fridge Guy is that for Carm, and the moment of indecision when he doesn’t know if he should call the fridge guy or pick up his girlfriend’s call is meant to express the tension between his obligation to her in conflict with his obligation as a business owner. He ends up doing neither (and also takes his eye off the build-out, and basic attention to detail in kitchen operations). It becomes a bit of an overblown and maudlin symbol in the season finale. My advice is just send it to voicemail, call the guy, then call her back, bro.
Friends & Family – A mock service both to treat the people close to the restaurant to a meal, and an opportunity to stress test your staff and service.
Gut – An early debate is over whether the renovation job the crew is doing at the restaurant is a “Facelift” or a “Gut”. The former is cosmetic—changing the tile, maybe putting up some wall paper or some paint. It’s relatively cheap work that crucially does not require submitting plans to the DOB. A gut means quite literally digging into the guts of a space: namely plumbing and electric, breaking walls, putting up new ones, and running lines of pipe or wire. You never know what’s going to happen when you get in the walls, and that’s born out in the show. The Bear has mold and a severe pest infestation due to years old neglect.
Jeffrey – In the first season, by virtue of her accent and not understanding the idea of referring to her coworkers by the title “chef”, Tina starts calling Carm “Jeff.” By season two it’s evolved to “Jeffrey”, and this is simply great, lived in writing. In kitchens you end up with all types of stupid nicknames that evolve overtime, and before you know it you’re calling someone named Carmen Jeffrey, which would make no sense to someone entering your kitchen for the first time, but makes perfect sense in the context of a close working relationship over time.
Materials – This goes back to Carm as the perfectionist from season 1 who can’t face reality or live in the real world. He’s looking to import outlandishly expensive craft door handles and spoons from Europe. I get with 800k he’s playing with fuck you money, but it’s a rookie mistake and lack or resourcefulness or imagination.
Napkin – Richie sets up a clever trick during an interview with a FOH candidate. He turns the napkin in front of her at the set table where they’re conducting the interview, waiting for her to notice over the course of their conversation. She doesn’t, and loses the gig. No resume is as valuable as seeing how someone works, what their tendencies and bad habits are, and how willing they are to work on them. In this instance, she displayed a lack of awareness and the particular strain of OCD you need to be good at service on this level.
Omelet – The French omelet is said to be the mark of a good cook. It’s at once a dish anyone can make, and one that is incredibly difficult to make well. The titular omelet of episode 9 is made by Sydney for Natalie. It’s more or less flawless, although, if I may nitpick, the pan doesn’t seem hot enough because the butter isn’t “singing” as it should when it first hits the pan, and she pipes a thin tube of Boursin onto the setting eggs, a major no-no (but almost certainly delicious, based on Ludo Lefevbre’s omelet recipe). Extra point for rubbing butter onto the rolled omelet on the plate, and the textural chip crumble with chive garnish spoke directly to my Jewish palate. More food based intimacy in season 3, please.
Permits – At the end of the first episode Carmy and Sydney leave early because there’s not much more they can do without the necessary work permits. In the real world, doing at least some onsite work without permits is not just commonplace, it’s a necessity.
Poaching – In desperation, with no resumes coming in post-Covid, Sydney tries to convince some cooks on a smoke break out behind a restaurant she walks by to come work for her, like an evil drug dealer trying to turn kids on to crack in a 90s PSA. She’s rightfully shut down and cursed out by their chef who catches her red handed.
Quenelle – The bullet shaped dollop you impose on a semi-firm solid like ice cream, butter, or a creamed protein mixture with a wet spoon (or two) and some technique for entirely aesthetic purposes. Learning how to form a quenelle serves as a metaphor for Marcus’ maturation from a kid fucking with bread and donuts to a real pastry chef.
R&D– The food component of the early season is sparing, and mostly all research and development. We see the work that goes into producing inspiration and creativity. A good dish doesn’t just come to you in the shower (or at least not fully formed), you have to earn it. It’s not just cooking, not just reading, not just talking, not just watching, not just taking notes, not just eating, it’s all of the above. It’s learning, thinking, trying and failing. As much as this season is about the nuts and bolts of opening a restaurant, it’s also about finding the statements you want to make through your food, how you find the “words” and emotions you want to convey, how you learn the precise ways to articulate them.
Richie’s Electrician – A great expression of a common problem in restaurant buildouts. You’re coming from a world of cooks, waiters and bartenders, there isn’t much overlap in the world of construction, so everyone claims to have “a guy”, and you’re pretty much at the mercy of this questionable shady character, who briefly has your restaurant and your life in their hands.
Romance – A serious issue for cooks, chefs, anyone in the industry. The old adage is it’s basically impossible to date outside the field. The hours and lifestyle are simply too difficult to contend with against someone who works a 9-5. The show makes a smart decision to pair Carm off with a doctor, who gets the insane schedule and stressful work environment. Molly Gordon as Claire is great, and you can see from the jump she really understands and respects Carm and his passion. We see how hard it is for Carm to maintain that passion when divided, which eventually is undone by Carm’s impulsiveness and brokenness.
Small Wares – This is actually one of the fun parts of setting a place up. You pick out the plates and glasses, the forks and knives and napkins, the carafes and ice buckets, and get to imagine what the actual finished place will look and feel like some eventual day in the distant future when you finally open. What isn’t fun is having to make pragmatic decisions over aesthetic ones, as Carmy and Sydney must, because you have to anticipate breakage, theft, availability, and budget when you’re picking out these items.
Stage – This is a stagiaire, an apprenticeship where you go somewhere to work for free and learn. Carmy arranges for Marcus to stay on a houseboat in Copenhagen, work under an English pastry chef played by Will Poulter, and briefly live out the plot of an episode of Atlanta season 3. Marcus begins to learn the micro-precise art of both making and plating high end desserts, a discipline closer to science and sculpture than cooking. With a season so bogged down in wall mold and permits, it’s a lovely, sensuous sojourn overseas and a reminder why all this bullshit is worth it. Lionel Boyce is tremendous. You see him thinking through each bite of food. He is present and alive and excited in a way you only get to be once for a short and very special period of dawning virginal wonder as you fall in love with your craft.
“Too Many Ideas”– A real problem chefs work through in dish creation and we see Sydney struggle with. Young, excitable chefs typically want to cram as much technique and as many flavors as possible onto the plate. Maturation in dish creation, as in writing, is being a good editor and finding the essence of what you’re trying to express.
Whiteboard – Or clear board, performing crucial utility, a running sticky note at high volume choke points in any restaurant tracking the punch list in your head you can jot down as you work and keep in a shared space.
Workflow – One of the most fun and challenging parts of designing a kitchen from scratch is the limitless permutations of how to play Tetris with your equipment. In episode 5, we see Carm simulating service and trying to figure out which arrangement is the most intuitive, allowing for the quickest pick-ups. Putting a deep fryer on the wrong side of the cooktop or a lowboy in a spot where the swing of the door could be obstructed can have serious ramifications down the line if you’re not careful about where you place it. We see this happen with the shelving above the line, over sautée pan storage that forces a right handed cook to reach across their body. You have to anticipate future service and any problem that could arise from having your salamander in the wrong place, because once your plans are set and the pipes are run, it’s too late to change it.