‘The Bear’ (Disney +, produced by FX) was one of the revelation series of 2022 and the recent Golden Globe for its protagonist, Jeremy Allen White, confirms the success of a story that reveals the interiors of a kitchen, but above all what is cooked inside each one of the people who work in it. Of the traumas that drag, of the limitations, of the expectations and the hopes. And, especially, how everything can go to waste in less than the time it takes for a sirloin to brown in the oven.
The premise from which the series starts is succulent: a chef accustomed to moving around three-starred restaurants –it is intuited that it is the Noma in Copenhagen, recently topical– returns to his native Chicago to take over the restaurant that his brother after committing suicide: the Original Beef of Chicagoland, specializing in Italian sandwiches like its juicy Chicago Italian Beef Sandwichthe favorite of the underworld of the ‘windy city’.
And no, it is not the typical story in which everyone boycotts the new one, the one they do not accept as a leader. If not, it is rather a problem of adaptation, of reading the environment, of lack of flexibility and of a self-demand that ends up becoming self-exploitation. And it is that sometimes it is not about what you want to do, but about what you can.
The protagonist, Carmen Berzatto (‘Carmy’ for friends), wants to continue serving the same sandwiches as always, but with an improved recipe and applying a work process inspired by the methods of the great master of French cuisine, Auguste Escoffier. Things don’t go quite right, obviously.
Haute cuisine trauma
One of his great successes in ‘The Bear’ is that there are neither good nor bad characters, but each one does what they can with the backpack they carry. To start with ‘Carmy’ itself, which It has not emerged unscathed from the tyrannical climate that prevails in some restaurants of impeccable prestige. Proof that he wants to change things, he decides to call all the members of the kitchen “chef” as a sign of respect. But sometimes it’s not just the words, it’s the system itself.
And when you walk on a wire, any gust of wind throws you into the void. For example, a good food review becomes a barrage of orders that lead the kitchen to supersaturation that unleashes a storm of fire and self-destruction. However, from time to time, everything has to burn for something better to be born. And, in fact, that’s what it’s about ‘The Bear’to get rid of burdens and prejudices to find one’s own path, both culinary and vital.
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All of this seasoned with a crude portrait of winter Chicago, convincing performances, some humor, the inevitable mobster touch, an exquisite soundtrack and a background message that contradicts the spirit, let’s say, of ‘Masterchef’: neither stress, nor shouting, nor contempt are good ingredientsneither to create a molecular cuisine recipe nor to make a simple sandwich.
If eating is a pleasure, so should cooking. Let’s hope that Carmy and his ‘staff’ enjoy a little more in the second season of ‘The Bear’, which will be released next summer.
Featured Dish: Chicago Italian Beef Sandwich
Just because it’s a sandwich doesn’t mean it’s ‘fast food’, far from it, because it takes a long time to make the Chicago Italian Beef Sandwich from ‘Carmy’. You have to first sear the beef tenderloin in the pan and then put it in the oven for two hours accompanied by a stir-fry of vegetables and beef broth. Then it is cut into thin slices and mounted on the bun together with a sauce made with the cooking juice itself and vegetables from the gardener.
