Watching The Bear, Hulu’s gripping new series, felt less like entertainment and more like revisiting a past life. As someone who has navigated the intense environments of Michelin-starred kitchens, the show’s depiction of toxic restaurant culture hit uncomfortably close to home. One scene in particular, where a chef’s furious berating echoes in the protagonist’s memory – “Why are you so slow? Why are you so f**king slow?” – forced me to pause and reflect. Despite knowing it was fiction, the raw emotion and aggressive language were ripped straight from the playbook of kitchens I knew intimately. The flashbacks to my own experiences, like a sous-chef questioning my intelligence after a simple misunderstanding, were visceral. My automatic, trained response in those situations? A meek, “Yes, chef.”
I found myself struggling to watch The Bear, not due to poor quality, but precisely because of its unsettling accuracy. It wasn’t just good TV; it was a mirror reflecting the often-hidden realities of restaurant kitchen life. The show masterfully captures the chaotic ballet of service, the petty sabotage of hidden mise en place, the simmering tension, and even the accidental (or not-so-accidental) burns. The realism was so potent, it was genuinely triggering, conjuring memories of navigating a cutthroat, high-pressure world. Conversations with fellow restaurant veterans confirmed my reaction; The Bear wasn’t just a show – it was a stark reminder of shared professional trauma.
The Bear centers around Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a chef prodigy returning to his Chicago roots to take over his family’s sandwich shop after his brother’s untimely death. Carmy, shaped by the relentless pursuit of perfection in fine dining, imposes those standards on his inherited team. He insists on addressing everyone as “chef,” a sign of respect in his world, and enforces meticulous fine dining practices, like precisely cutting masking tape for labeling containers. Beneath his professional exterior, Carmy is grappling with grief and the deep-seated trauma accumulated from years spent in what his sous-chef describes as “the most excellent restaurant in the United States of America.”
The series unflinchingly portrays the brutal truth: success in the rarefied world of fine dining often demands a devastating toll on one’s physical and mental well-being. The grueling hours are just the tip of the iceberg. The relentless obsession with achieving an unattainable “perfection” fosters a breeding ground for toxicity and abuse. My own experiences included enduring verbal assaults and even physical harm – I still recall a sous-chef deliberately burning me with a blowtorch.
Riley Redfern, a pastry chef with experience at acclaimed establishments like Coi and Eleven Madison Park, echoed this sentiment, admitting she couldn’t watch beyond the first episode. “I know I didn’t get far enough in the series to see where it wrapped up,” Redfern confessed, “but I was like, I can’t have this in my brain.” The intensity was simply too much to bear.
Alix Baker, a Chopped champion and former cook now working as a private chef, found even the trailer triggering. “I feel like I’d be watching the unhealthy work environment I chose to leave,” Baker explained, opting to avoid the show altogether. For many who have escaped the pressure cooker of fine dining kitchens, The Bear serves as a potent, and painful, reminder of what they left behind.
One scene in The Bear encapsulates the obsessive pursuit of perfection that permeates these kitchens. During the post-service cleanup, cook Marcus questions Carmy’s insistence on using a toothbrush to scrub the stove. Carmy’s response is telling: “It’s about consistency,” he states firmly. “We can’t operate at a higher level without consistency.” This relentless drive for flawlessness, often bordering on the absurd, is a defining characteristic of fine dining culture.
My own time in fine dining instilled in me a similar fixation on “perfection,” meticulously measured against the impossibly high standards of those kitchens. Everything was timed down to the second. In one restaurant, the front-of-house staff would place a daily inspirational quote on the kitchen pass during service. I still possess one of these mementos – a quote from Aristotle, underlined with the prestigious three Michelin stars and framed with green tape: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” The Bear powerfully portrays this ingrained philosophy, highlighting both its allure and its deeply damaging consequences within the world of high-stakes culinary arts.
