Analysis: The working kitchen environment of a restaurant is so ripe for a drama like The Bear
Contains some spoilers for Season 1 of The Bear
The Bear is a restaurant drama based in Chicago that has achieved considerable acclaim, not least because of the quality if its writing and acting. Series 1 follows the story of Chef Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (played by Jeremy Allen White) who spent his career working in the kitchens of America's finest restaurants.
He finds himself back home trying to cope with the sudden death of his brother Mikey, who owned and ran a well-known local Chicago sandwich shop known as The Beef which he leaves to Carmen. Eight relatively short episodes follow the melodrama that unfolds as Carmen struggles to cope with both Mikey’s sudden departure and the travails of running a busy restaurant.
The Bear is not for the faint hearted and the kitchen scenes in particular are filled with sometimes explosive tension. For anyone who has worked in busy restaurants, much of that tension will bring back PTSD-like nightmares that can sometimes creep up on you as the episodes unfold. At times, these scenes feel like a battle.
Trailer for Season 1 of The Bear
The similarity between the regimented shouts of "Yes Chef" that echo throughout The Beef's kitchen and the refrain of "Yes Sir" so familiar to any soldier reflect the fact that the traditional kitchen brigade system is based on a military footprint. A lot of traditional kitchens were structured on the basis of the military system developed in the 19th century and largely attributed to the famous French chef Auguste Escoffier.
There are strict lines of command in this system drawn from Head Chef to Sous Chef, from Sous Chef to Chef de Partie and so on, with limited autonomy and even less innovation and input fed back up the line. Although many contemporary restaurants still use similar job titles, they now better reflect a more authentic leadership style where staff are supported, input encouraged and a much more team based approach prevails.
However, The Bear leans heavily into the more traditional structures and lines of command that were strongly associated with the industry in the past. It needs to do this because so much of the drama in the programme stems from people stepping outside those rigid boundaries. Episode 7, in particular, captures my own memory of incidents that were sometimes a feature of the industry I worked in for many years. Rather sadistically, I have watched the episode again and again, trying to pin down exactly why it elicits such a reaction.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Arena, review of The Bear
Modern restaurants demand exacting standards and, in the episode, the restaurant attempts to implement a new ordering system. As we count down towards the service deadline, which is constantly referred to by Cameron, tensions and frustrations build. The distracted team fail to grasp how the new system will work. Once the orders start coming in, the system breaks down and the true battle commences as the kitchen descends into chaos with all the commensurate verbal abuse and aggression. The scene works, I think, because it captures so well periods in our own lives that themselves are full to the brim of frustration, loss, and a general feeling of chaos as the world around us spins out of control.
The Bear presents a dramatic view of restaurant culture and, it could be argued, one that does not properly reflect modern restaurant environments. Like all good drama, it takes high stress situations, enlarges them and uses an array of techniques like music, close up shots and great dialogue to heighten the tension for the audience.
Of course, things can get out of control in real-life restaurants, but there are also many operators today that handle things more professionally. These businesses quietly go about their business. They tend not to garner headlines and no one will ever dramatize them in a series like The Bear. In these places, high stress situations are dealt with efficiently. Yes, sometimes they escalate, but it is rare that they reach the climactic apex that we witnessed in Episode 7.
From FX, scenes from Episode 7 of series one, which was filmed in one take
These days, we seem to be presented with two interpretations of the culinary world in popular culture. On the one hand we have the screaming, expletive-driven exploits of people like Gordon Ramsay, the high drama of movies like Boiling Point and the spine tingling tensions of The Bear. At the other end of the spectrum we have the warm cuddly atmosphere associated with programmes like The Great British Bake Off, or the "cheeky chappy" nature of a Jamie Oliver demonstration series. Both extremes fail to reflect the reality of working in the sector. In truth the job falls somewhere in the middle.
The working kitchen environment is so ripe for a drama like The Bear for two reasons. Firstly, it is a space that straddles the separate worlds of creative expression and business. Often these worlds are at odds with one another.
The second reason for the rich vein of drama emanating from the kitchen depicted in The Bear is that it can at times reflect our own lives. We are all attempting to organise those lives in a calm and systematic fashion, reminiscent of Carmen's previous life, as we work, raise children and juggle a variety of different roles.
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From RTÉ 2fm's Dave Fanning Show, Ali Dunworth discusses The Bear and some of the best chef movies
In many cases, we have deliberately developed our own domestic kitchens as the focal point of our homes. We have visions of mealtimes replicating programmes like The Great British Bake Off, full of summer joy, sunshine, smiles and the smell of home-baking. In reality they are often more like Ramsey’s Hell's Kitchen.
Unlike the dramas portrayed on our screens, tensions that arise have little to do with the actual food on the plate. That food could be a warming winter creation from the pages of a Nigella Lawson cookbook or more likely a frozen chicken nuggets and chips meal from Aldi that we are trying to shovel into the kids before football training.
Sometimes, we might even find ourselves trapped in our own version of Episode 7. The constant hum of background music and noise helps us reach the same crescendo that we witnessed in the episode. Our systems break down, family tensions boil over as the outside worlds of work stress, relationship problems and loss seep in through the open plan kitchen door. Small issues get blown out of proportion and we find ourselves lost. Like The Beef’s kitchen team, we feel like we have no mechanism to cope and chaos ensues.
Trailer for Season 2 of The Bear
Increasingly, well-run restaurants do not operate like The Beef because modern well-trained chefs are now being given the tools to cope. Many in the industry recognise the difficult nature of a business where so much is time dependant and resting on the subjective opinion of others. Good restaurant kitchens teach their staff how to harness their creativity into a balanced and rewarding outcome. They understand that chefs need to rely more on modern leadership techniques rather than old hierarchical structures that are more suited to the battlefield than the workplace.
Culinary education has also recognised that fact. It has always tried to teach students more than just the practical skills they need but it now works much harder on the leadership, teamwork and emotional skills needed to cope with high pressure situations that inevitably arise. Increasingly the true meaning of the term Chef as a Leader is being understood. The School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology in TU Dublin is a case in point with Culinary Arts programmes now embedding modules like the Mindful Kitchen which cover topics such as mindful food production, chef self-care and positive kitchen culture.
I have yet to watch the second series of The Bear. I know I will have to steel myself before I do, as I am still recovering from the trauma of the first series. At the end of the first series, The Beef sandwich shop was about to be re-incarnated into a new, and hopefully improved version of itself. I would like to think it will be one that better reflects the changing nature of leadership in the industry, but I suspect not. After all, there wouldn’t be much kitchen drama in that!
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
