IBack home at the Original Beef of Chicagoland, things are tense. Space is limited. Money is low. The bills are literally piling up. There are not enough pots and knives for everyone. The mixer does not work. The meat supplier did not deliver enough beef.
It’s the world of The Bear, the much-talked-about American TV show that premiered this summer, finally coming to the UK on October 5 on Disney+. Now, British audiences can follow the trials and tribulations of Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, a successful but troubled young chef who, after the sudden death of her brother, returns home to Chicago to run her family’s struggling sandwich shop.
The big appeal of The Bear is that it purports to give viewers a look inside a restaurant kitchen. Even though it’s been 20 years since Anthony Bourdain published Kitchen Confidential and revealed restaurant secrets – that chef’s specialties are usually made from the night before’s leftovers and that hollandaise is a breeding ground for salmonella – the appetite to know what goes on behind the kitchen doors remains.
In the show, Carmy and her team, a collection of idiosyncratic personalities, are trapped together in a tiny space, working against the clock to bring it all together by opening up time and frequently venting their frustrations on each other.
“It’s a true representation of a kitchen,” says Sarah Mispagel, a Chicago baker who made most of the breads, cakes and donuts that appear on the show and who speaks for many chefs. “Yeah, it’s embellished, but it’s a TV show. We all aspire to work in fair kitchens with paid sick and vacation days, but a show that had all of that wouldn’t be very exciting.
The Bear has had a big impact on real Chicago restaurants. One of the minor arcs of this season is the quest of Marcus, an aspiring pastry chef, to create the perfect chocolate cake. (The creators of The Bear were inspired by the cake from Portillo’s, a popular local fast-food chain.) When Mispagel and her husband, Ben Lustbader, opened their own cafe, Loaf Lounge, in Chicago’s northwest in August they included the Mispagel cake made for the show, identified on the menu as “The Bear Chocolate Cake”. They now sell 400 slices a week and often run out.
“It was great,” she says. “We don’t have very deep pockets. The bear was my public relations manager.
The Bear has also helped other restaurants. The Original Beef of Chicagoland specializes in Italian beef, a signature Chicago sandwich of seasoned roast beef thinly sliced and piled on a soft bun. It’s often topped with sweet peppers or a spicy vegetable relish called giardiniera, or both, and many Chicagoans prefer it “wet” or au jus. Since the American premiere of The Bear, sales of Italian beef have surged not just in Chicago, but across the country.
But some Chicagoans, ever sensitive to any hint of coastal condescension from Hollywood, aren’t happy with how the city is portrayed on screen. The Bear is set primarily in the River North neighborhood – scenes were shot at Mr Beef, a real beef stand in the area – which is described as gritty and un-gentrified without too many restaurants, the kind of neighborhood where anyone one can fire a gun in the air, like a character from the first episode does, without attracting the attention of the police.
“[The show] flattens the city of Chicago and its contributions to the food scene in a way that I don’t think accurately represents the neighborhood or the city as a whole,” says Ali Barthwell, a Chicago resident and writer for Last Week Tonight. With John Oliver. The real River North, Barthwell says, is an affluent area near the city’s central business district, filled with restaurants — some with Michelin stars — and hotels that cater to tourists, and there’s a heavy police presence. “To insinuate that people in this neighborhood haven’t seen braised ribs and polenta seems really inaccurate.”
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