The food of The Bear is central to the storytelling and relationship-building on the series The Bear, an episodic television dramedy 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 exquisitely trained, experienced, elite chefs who work together to save Berzatto family restaurant, a failing Italian beef sandwich joint, and launch a new high-end dining destination called The Bear. The show's culinary producer, Courtney "Coco" Storer, is an experienced chef and the sister of series creator Christopher Storer. Executive producer and castmember Matty Matheson is also an experienced chef and cookbook author. The show's culinary production team, led by Coco Storer, includes culinary co-producer C.J. Capace, chefs Brian Lockwood and Justin Selk, and Nicole Bayani. The team creates a culinary reference guide for every episode, in part because "The show itself is tracking a Michelin-level restaurant, which is...very precise in how they set things up and also the tools that they use over things that they don't." The Bear restaurant set at Cinespace in Chicago is "outfitted with working gas stovetops and professional ovens so the cast can react to real heat and all its effects: They feel hot and sweaty and can smell onions caramelizing (or burning), or a sauce boiling over."
An Italian beef sandwich is a very regional, Chicago-specific sandwich, with significantly less fame with than a Philadelphia cheesesteak or a Cuban sandwich from Florida. The Italian beef experience, according to Chicagoan Lucas Kwan Peterson, writing in the Los Angeles Times, is "a long sandwich filled with thin-sliced marinated meat on a French roll drenched in juice and swaddled tightly in waxed paper or insulated foil wrap," and it should feel heavier than it looks as a result of absorbing the liquid jus and the oil from the toppings. Beef was readily accessible in Chicago, as the city had the Union stockyards and was "home to America's meat packing industry until the 1920s." As retold by Chicago native Kevin Pang in Esquire magazine:
Another description characterized it as sort of like a roast-beef sandwich, but also sort of like a French dip, because of the importance of beef broth, also known as "gravy or au jus". The jus is typically a "thin, broth-like gravy reminiscent of oregano and bouillon cubes." The beef is typically seasoned with oregano, basil, red pepper, black pepper, and either fresh garlic or garlic powder and then "roasted slowly, partially submerged in beef stock." The beef should be fully cooked, then cooled, shaved, very thinly, not chopped.
According to the Chicago Tribune, if the sandwich is "dipped," it "often comes out looking like a water-logged roll of paper towels." Requests for "wet" get jus spooned over the top. The bread has to be "chewy and firm" to hold up against the dipping. On the show Marcus (Lionel Boyce) originally bakes the rolls in-house but in real Chicago, they are often ordered from Turano, Gonnella, or D'amato's bakeries. Typical topping options include either sweet peppers (green bell, red bell, or Melrose peppers), or hot peppers, also known as the aforementioned giardiniera (described as "pickled mix of vegetables and chiles submerged in oil"), and in recent years "shredded cheese and tomato sauce have become increasingly popular." Italian beef sandwiches are commonly accompanied by French fries and/or a "cup of Italian ice served with a plastic straw that has a spoon on one end." Some of this food culture developed around Taylor Street in Chicago's Little Italy. Chris Zucchero's recommended sandwich order is "<nowiki/>'hot, sweet, and juicyâÂÂthat's the Italian beef sandwich with hot peppers, which is the giardiniera, sweet peppers, which is bell peppers, and dipped. That's the way to get it." Writing in 2022, Peterson said of the Italian beef: Famous Italian beef spots in Chicago other than Zucchero's Mr. Beef (which inspired the show's Original Beef of Chicagoland sandwich joint), include Al's #1 Italian (originally opened in 1938 as a front for a gambling operation), Tony's Italian Deli & Subs in Edison Park, Johnnie's in Elmwood Park, the Portillo's chain, and the Buona chain.
The notion of a "chaos menu" comes up between Carmy and Sydney multiple times in season two, namely in "Pasta," "Pop," and "Bolognese." According to Mashed's Samantha Sied, chaos cooking is "focusing on merging food from different cultures, as in fusion cooking, chaos is weird and subversive, prompting you to lighten up about cooking." As explained by The Takeout's Danny Palumbo, "'Chaos' might not be the most flattering way to describe a chef's cooking, as it implies a sort of thoughtlessness. Diners don't want their food to be some dashed-off, wacky experiment" but simultaneously "The problem with labeling food as fusion, though, is that it flattens each cuisine into a linear, self-contained concept. Thing + Thing. Mexican and Italian. Korean and Filipino. The world today is much more diverse and multidirectional, and we have a cooking style to reflect that, with chefs drawing inspiration from dozens of different cultural highways."
Another description is that a chaos menu "is the idea of a menu that doesn't follow a particular style of cuisine, mixing food from different regions to create a fusion of flavors. That's quite a bit different from The Beef's menu in season 1, which consisted mostly of sandwiches and Italian classics." In the words of Tasting Table, at the end of episode two, "From the looks of what they have, though, it seems more like dissonance is the order of the day: oceanic hamachi crudo, beef tenderloin in cherry vinegar, smoked bone marrow with frozen grapes, sardines swimming in spicy piri-piri sauce, and an ice cream sundae featuring veal stock." (To be fair to the chefs, "veal-stock sundae...sounds delicious" was meant to be a joke.)
Their joint brainstorming is slow-going, in part because chaos cooking requires not just confidence and technical skill, but a shared vision of how to merge disparate concepts, styles, ingredients, techniques, and culinary habits, so, "Despite their shared enthusiasm for kitchen experimentation, things don't always go smoothly with Carmy and Syd's menu-making methods. One sauce that the two try is way too acidic, so much spitting out and various obscenities ensue. In another instance, grapefruit is burned and over-salted (accompanied by more spitting and swearing), while a plate of stuffed pasta is also a fail. As we watch the chefs work through the menu, sometimes it seems they do more spitting than swallowing, and we wonder how they'll ever pull things together in time for the restaurant's grand opening."
As the season progresses food plays a heavy role in the dynamic between Sydney and Carmy and Claire Dunlap (Molly Gordon): "When opening up about her failed business Sydney admitted that the final nail in the coffin was when she forgot to cook pasta for a really important dish. Later on Carmy cooks this dish for Claire, his new girlfriend. Every meal we see Claire eating was in reality one of Sydney's creations (another example: the frozen grape dish served in the finale)."