When The Bear landed on our screens last summer, it quickly cemented its status as one of the most compelling (and simultaneously stress-inducing) shows on TV right now. Oh, and it also got us shouting “behind” whenever we walked through a kitchen, just to up the ante.
The Hulu and Disney+ series tells the story of Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy, a celebrated chef with a track record working at some of the best restaurants in the world. His career takes an unforeseen turn after his brother Mikey (played in flashback by Jon Bernthal) dies by suicide.
Returning home to Chicago, Carmy takes on the responsibility of turning round the fortunes of the family’s ailing sandwich shop, The Original Beef Of Chicagoland.
Just like the British movie Boiling Point, which is soon to be a BBC TV series, The Bear perfectly captures the adrenaline rush of working in a seriously high pressure environment.
That’s in part because its showrunners have called upon their connections in the restaurant industry to make sure that it’s an accurate representation of what it’s really like to be a chef.
As The Bear returns for a second season (complete with some seriously star-studded cameos, which we won’t spoil for you), we’ve taken a deep dive into how the show was made…
1. The cast features a bona fide celebrity chef
Canadian chef Matty Matheson, formerly executive chef at Toronto’s Parts & Labour, appears on the show as handyman Neil Fak. Ironically, he’s one of the only Bear characters who doesn’t cook; instead, he pops up at the restaurant whenever there’s a problem with the plumbing or the electrics. He neatly summed up his role in an interview with The Telegraph, explaining: “I got my little screwdriver and I’m fixing things and trying to get free food.”
Matty also shared stories about his experiences in the restaurant industry with the show’s creators, serving as a producer and culinary consultant. “We taught them the way that people move in a kitchen, the way that they talk, you know, building their confidence up or bringing their confidence down, and where they fit in,” he said.
2. The cast had culinary training before filming started
Jeremy Allen White, aka Carmy, did “a two week crash course” at the Institute of Culinary Education in Pasadena, California, alongside Ayo Edebiri (Sydney); he followed that up with stints working in kitchens at Kumiko, a Japanese-inspired restaurant and cocktail bar in Chicago, and Pasjoli, a French bistro in Santa Monica.
3. And a professional baker makes Marcus’s doughnuts
Pastry chef Marcus, played by Lionel Boyce, is fanatical about creating the perfect doughnut. The sweet treats we see on screen in season one were prepared by professional baker Sarah Mispagel-Lustbader, who taught Lionel how to do the finishing touches.
“She would prep the cakes and teach me how to do the last steps,” he told Vulture. “It would be me frosting it, or putting the glaze on, or filling the doughnuts… It’s just me doing the final steps, because baking takes forever. We don’t have eight hours to film them from start to finish. It’s just TV magic.”
4. There were no hand doubles used in the show
That’s right - whenever you see a close-up of vegetables being chopped at seriously high speed on the show (which happens pretty often), that’s the actors showing off their skills.
“Those are my hands,” Ayo told Today, noting that her best friend’s mum, who is a chef, didn’t initially believe it. “[She] called me and was like, ‘I know those aren’t your hands,’” Ayo recalled. “I was like, ‘Those are my hands. I learned something.’”
5. Just like the restaurant on-screen, the show keeps it in the family
Also on board as a culinary producer for The Bear is Courtney Storer. The sister of the show’s creator Christopher, she has worked in restaurants like Jon & Vinny’s and Animal in Los Angeles and Verjus in Paris.
So what does being a culinary producer actually involve?
“The responsibilities are more expansive than just food styling or managing the food,” she told Vanity Fair. “Much of the job is being a producer, being able to utilise the chef community and bring people on board to assist and create the right vibe… I felt like a facilitator.”
6. The sandwich shop is based on a real venue
The Original Beef Of Chicago was inspired by Mr. Beef On Orleans, a legendary Italian sandwich shop in Chicago. Mr. Beef was founded in 1979 by Joe Zucchero, who died earlier this year, and his son Chris grew up alongside The Bear’s creator Christoper Storer in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge.
“Years ago, he said, ‘I’m gonna write about Mr. Beef. I can guarantee you that,’” Chris told Variety last month. Years later, his colleague received an enquiry about filming at the restaurant.
“All these people come walking out look like Hollywood suits people, and then I see Storer walking off the bus and he’s like, ‘Remember I told you I was gonna write about this place? Well, we’re going to do it. I got this pilot and it needs to be done here at Mr. Beef.’”
7. Chris Zucchero even appears in the show
Chris made a cameo in the opening episode of season one, cropping up as the butcher who sells meat to Carmy; according to Variety, he also helped cater for parties marking the release of season two - but he’s actually yet to watch the show. “Food people are not the same as actors or musicians,” Chris told Variety.
“That’s the same reason why I don’t really promote anything with The Bear. I don’t want to be the guy that’s like, ’Look at me. I’m the fucking Bear guy.”
8. Not every episode is filmed at Mr. Beef, though
Although much of the opening episode was shot at Mr. Beef, when a full series was commissioned, they recreated the restaurant at Cinespace, a Chicago studio space known as ‘the Hollywood of the Mid-West’. “They did it down to a T, down to the stains on the wall,” Chris told Variety.
However, the show still features exterior shots of the real restaurants as well as some scenes filmed in the dining room at the front.
9. The showrunners deliberately hired writers with restaurant experience
“We definitely only hired writers who had had [those] jobs,” co-showrunner Joanna Calo told The Hollywood Reporter (her own “food service background” is a stint working “in the dining hall in my college and at an ice cream store in New Jersey”).
“We had such amazing access to these really detailed stories of real-life chefs that our writers were able to sort of get to the character stuff and focus on the character stuff, but also focus on the larger themes that are there about running a small business,” she explained.
10. The cast call each other ‘chef’ even when the cameras aren’t rolling
“Everybody’s ‘chef’ on set,” Jeremy explained to IndieWire. “I don’t think it’s method. I just think it’s just fun to say.”
11. One episode from the first season was filmed in just one take
In season one, episode seven, a positive newspaper review means that the restaurant is swamped with bookings. This should be a good thing, but the team just doesn’t have the capacity to meet the orders that are flooding in. Tempers fray, stress levels creep up – and there’s even an accidental stabbing. And to amp up the tension even further, the entire thing was filmed in just one take, so there’s no getting away from the in-kitchen drama.
“The more and more I read it, I kept thinking how much a cut could kill the momentum, so the idea of doing it as a one-er was really the best way not to undercut the tension,” Christopher told Consequence in an interview.
The camera team mapped out the route that the characters and the camera would take during the episode, so that they knew exactly where they had to be. The cast and crew filmed six takes, but only four of them ran through from beginning to end; one of them is the episode we see on screen.
12. Jeremy helped design his character’s tattoos
The show’s star worked with tattoo artist Ben Shield to design Carmy’s inkings. Speaking to Vulture, he explained that the process helped him to work out his character’s back story. “It was actually my introduction to figuring out Carmy, because Ben wrote down a list of questions,” he said.
“It was a really great exercise in writing a background for your character through the art they have,” he added.
Ben told him that “when people get their first tattoos, it’s going to be a boyfriend or a girlfriend or their parents or an area code or an address, because that’s something about your identity no one can challenge you on” - and so Carmy has the number 773, the area code for Chicago, tattooed onto his arm.
The Bear is available to stream on Disney+ now.