"I have to remind myself to... to be present, you know. Remind myself that the sky is not falling, that... there is no other shoe, which is incredibly difficult because there is always another shoe."
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If you were following along, “The Bear” didn’t just get food and cooking right. It got Chicago right, it got the culture of the workplace right, it got the complexity of grief right, it got the devastation of addiction right, it got the beauty of good hospitality right — along with the tortured ache that can lurk behind it.
It also got that the chef wasn’t the only important character in a restaurant, and slowly expanded its story lines into the emotional lives of the other people prepping, washing dishes, scrubbing walk-ins and fixing toilets through dysfunction and disaster.
The effect of the “Bear” effect on us has been an interest, not so much in the people who work in kitchens, but in their aesthetic. In the sweet, shoppable details of the cook’s accessories, from the warped quart container to the vintage jacket.
