A Love Letter and a Warning: The Bear’s Complicated Tribute to Restaurant Workers

Author: Molly Stephens

On June 23, 2022, FX on Hulu premiered a new original series titled The Bear, and by the second week of July, it was the second-most watched series across all streaming platforms. The premise was intriguing enough; a hot-shot chef is forced back to his hometown in Chicagoland to run his family’s italian beef shop in the wake of tragedy, and decides to flout all traditions of the current workplace culture, molding the place to be exactly what he wants within 10 minutes of arriving. There has been plenty of television focused around the restaurant industry, but what The Bear was able to accomplish was nothing short of a phenomenon in the zeitgeist. And it has been a doozy for your favorite industry professionals. 

Hospitality folks like myself were breathless the entirety of the first season. The accuracy! The attention to detail! Did they have people like us in the writers room? Anyone who’s ever worn a restaurant t-shirt as work uniform let out a collective gasp when we saw the protagonist drinking  out of a 32-ounce deli container. Chef has a bottle of Fernet in his office! Hearing our professional lexicon be seamlessly integrated into dialogue, seeing the deeply interpersonal conflicts of how exactly masking tape should be used to label prep items play out on screen… we felt seen. In the sensation that followed the premiere of The Bear (A perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes was granted for the first season, and 21 Emmy Awards to date), everyone I know who hasn’t lived this life was ardently asking me, “Is that what it’s actually like?” and I felt a bit of thrill to say, “Oh, it most certainly is.” Much of the critical acclaim of the show hinges upon flawless portrayals by the actors in capturing multi-layered stress, a chaotic cacophony of thousands of tiny tragedies, every person in a scene being quite simply at their breaking point in their own specific way. Characters navigate grief, trauma, anxiety, triumph, sweating profusely through a whirlwind of every human emotion while the clock ticks through service and tickets keep popping out. While the rest of the world was enraptured by a microcosm of stress they can visit for a moment through their screens, we were quite frankly triggered. I had to turn off the episode where they onboard DoorDash and pace around the living room calming myself down.  

But it was exposure, a glimpse into what our weird, wonderful jobs are like. The highs of the industry were as masterfully captured; those moments of intimacy and camaraderie that happen when collaboration works, the meditative moments of cleaning up after a hard night, the deep and abiding love we have for each other on the line. It was representation. Our dark senses of humor and unregulated nervous systems were on full display, being lauded as a breakout success in the media. And with this dynamic rendering of restaurant life, many perhaps felt a small swell of hope. We hoped we could garner some empathy from our non-industry communities, and maybe even patrons, after the grueling years of Covid-related brutality we were lucky to get through. We hoped that maybe the more sinister parts of our livelihood being brought into the light could create a shift in culture that bent away from our bosses feeling like the tormentous burden of creativity could be the springboard to exact that stress upon our already fragile sanity. 

But our leading role, played by Jeremy Allen White, was quite simply too sexy. We felt for him, pined for him, but also cringed at the culture he was creating in his kitchen, flinching at the ease with which he would scream at his employees. It’s fairly common knowledge that chefs, as a collective, are aggressive perfectionists with a penchant for short tempers and raised voices. But White’s character did all that with a style and panache that fully launched him directly into anti-hero territory. Kudos to the writers, and him as an actor, for being able to delicately craft the narrative that all his outbursts came from a place of deep psychological despair, but that doesn’t make what happens to us at work okay. Normalizing this, even glamorizing it, may have pushed forward a notion that those of us who work line-level positions in the restaurant industry have thick enough skin to not require the drastic institutional changes we have been desperately calling for since pre-covid years. 

This has manifested in a couple ways in our everyday movements through our careers. Firstly, it’s an established fact that most of us are battling a level of burnout the 9-5 crowd couldn’t fathom. This, coupled with market trends toward simplicity in a tumbling economy, has given these burnt-out chefs a new outlet. The sandwich shop/noodle spot/tapas bar/elevated-ish diner/whatever just opened in your neighborhood you’ve been dying to visit.  While I can appreciate a classically trained chef-type moving toward their roots or seeking out an endeavor that facilitates a better work-life balance, it doesn’t seem to be happening that way in praxis. What we’re seeing more frequently are humble concepts in a bourgeoisie delivery system. Yes, it’s a sandwich shop/noodle spot/tapas bar/elevated-ish diner, but the humility of the concept isn’t being honored in any tangible way. Instead it’s a stunningly beautiful space with every element a bespoke moment, offering an $18 sandwich with no sides. It’s the same egos, obsession to detail, perfectionism complex being contained into a lower-brow abstraction. With all the other trappings of toxic kitchen culture being carried into a new space, it’s clear the money spent on hand-hewn cedar corner booths probably wasn’t spent on therapy, and the same tortured-genius outbursts are being inflicted upon the rest of the staff as well. 

As the plot moved along in The Bear, and the fine-dining spot finally opened, I was personally surprised to find no one bothered to write in a front of house staff. Sure the divorced dad figured out steps of service, but the jarring lack of a sommelier left something to be desired. It would have been a great device to bring in additional layers of interpersonal drama. What was the cocktail director going to do with a daily rotating menu? Those of us behind bars and sidling up to tables have still felt cultural echoes from diners’ impressions of The Bear, and from where I sit (which is behind a bar at this current moment), it’s not been completely ideal. One of our most glaring issues with guests is the parasocial relationships they form with us. We decide how much we share with strangers, often strategically sticking to a repeated script of personal anecdotes that perfectly de-sanitize and humanize us into an ideal personality type to earn a healthy gratuity on a check. We can check vibes and adapt what direction that goes in to make us seem like a personable, friendly person to any demographic. It’s nothing short of a superpower. But over the years and thousands of people we interact with, we’re so often left feeling like a character in someone else’s life. Sure, part of that is by design, but the give-to-take ratio is completely off. Our patrons delve deep into their own lives, telling us about their family structures, workplaces, anxieties, and assorted other examples of wild over-sharing. We give just enough back to give the impression of a lasting relationship to ensure they return and keep our bills paid. And yes, of course, real friendships and relationships can and do form from this little dance, but in 90% of instances, we can often be left with feelings of being the community therapist and court jester all wrapped up into one. The Bear’s impact here is.. Detrimental. A television show giving heart-wrenching backstory on complicated characters put a tiny crack in our own hard-developed facade, and the people want more from us. Not in a way that leads to real investment in our lives or well-being, but in a way that will further melt us down into being nothing more than a living breathing part of other people’s entertainment. 

Overall, I enjoyed the show a lot (despite a complete lack of any meaningful plot in season 3, but we can all rest in our opinions about that). I’ll watch the next one when it comes out. I am mostly grateful that our industry could be shown some attention. I’m glad we were given some humanity. That our sensitivity, diversity, pains and joys could be seen by people who wouldn’t ever know about us. But like anything else, when given a moment to shine, the imperfections can be seen more clearly. 

About the Author: Molly Stephens is a bartender and writer living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She draws perspective and inspiration from a lifetime in a bizarre career, being extremely online, and her strange imagination. Her current writing can be found in PR for Cincinnati hip hop artists, and she never leaves her house.