The Bear production secrets and behind the scenes facts that are just as crazy as the show

Season three of The Bear has dropped on Disney+ and the chaos of the kitchen is back with arguments and most importantly, everyone’s crush on Jeremy Allen White. However, the show off cameras is a lot more controlled than it looks with a crazy amount of detail and production secrets put into making The Bear which is why it appears so accurate to a kitchen setting.

Not only are the writers sharing their experiences from working in a restaurant but some of the cast have been culinary and knife trained themselves. You know that job advert to work at your uni canteen? Applying for it could bring you one step closer to working on the set of The Bear. Although, I fear the food may be better in The Bear than at the campus restaurant, I wouldn’t fully trust it. So, here are all the production secrets behind the scenes for The Bear.

Yes, it’s based off a real sandwich shop

So the original Beef of Chicago was inspired by a real life sandwich shop called Mr. Beef On Orleans whom Christopher Storer the creator of The Bear knew the owner of since kindergarten. Chris Zucchero, the owner of Mr. Beef said to Variety: “All these people come walking out look like Hollywood suits people, and then I see Storer walking off the bus and he’s like, ‘Remember I told you I was gonna write about this place? Well, we’re going to do it. I got this pilot and it needs to be done here at Mr. Beef.” A fun fact is that the owner has never seen The Bear, clearly too busy in his own kitchen!

The owner of the real shop makes a cameo in the pilot episode

He may not watch the show but Chris Zucchero, the real life owner plays the butcher who sells meat to Carmy in season one, episode one. He is not looking to launch an acting career though as Chris said to Variety: “That’s the same reason why I don’t really promote anything with The Bear. I don’t want to be the guy that’s like, ’Look at me. I’m the fucking Bear guy.” To be fair, by making cameos in The Bear and doing interviews he is becoming known as Bear guy.

The cast includes a real life celebrity chef

Surprisingly, this celebrity cameo does not actually cook in the show and instead Matty Matheson appears as handyman Neil Fak – a slight downgrade from being a famous chef but still handy. Although, having a real chef was useful for the cast as Matty said to The Telegraph: “We taught them the way that people move in a kitchen, the way that they talk, you know, building their confidence up or bringing their confidence down, and where they fit in.” The cast seemed to be only learning from the professionals.

The cast underwent culinary training

Carmy, or Jeremy Allen White, was extremely dedicated and did a two week crash course at the Institute of Culinary Education in Pasadena, California for his role. This course sounds almost as stressful as being in the kitchen.

Writers actually had restaurant experience

Anyone who has worked in a restaurant has copious amounts of stories of rude customers or chefs that were either nice or horrific. I think it’s so cool that the show runners only hired people with restaurant backgrounds, meaning the stories are really accurate to a real life business.

Joanna Calo, co-showrunner told The Hollywood Reporter: “We had such amazing access to these really detailed stories of real-life chefs that our writers were able to sort of get to the character stuff and focus on the character stuff, but also focus on the larger themes that are there about running a small business.” She worked in her University dining hall so the next time you go the student canteen, there could be a future Hollywood writer there.

There was a whole episode filmed in only one take!

Episode seven in season one was filmed in one whole take which is impressive. To recap, this episode was when good newspaper reviews meant the restaurant was flooded with bookings. The fact the whole episode was in one take mimics the chaos of a kitchen setting. This meant the cast and team had to map out the routes of the characters for the whole episode but the lack of cuts allows the episode to be just manic.

There’s a professional doughnut maker for Lionel Boyce

Sarah Mispagel-Lustbader taught Lionel Boyce, who plays pastry chef Marcus, how to create the finishing touches to a perfect doughnut. He wouldn’t bake the whole thing, the episode shows Lionel actually just doing the final few touches such as putting on the glaze or filling the doughnut. Otherwise the viewers would be watching eight hours of a  doughnut being baked, that would be true method acting though.

The cast call each other chef on set

This is the most actor thing I’ve heard however, being a fellow drama student it probably does help to keep the momentum of working in a kitchen cohort when the cameras aren’t rolling. At least the cast don’t have to remember each other’s names it’s just chef to them.

It was not originally meant to be a TV series

The initial idea for The Bear was for it to be a feature film, imagine that being filmed all in one take? I would love to see that.

There were two major cuts to the pilot episode

So in the pilot, a scene where Carmy freaks out was cut from the original story line. Apparently, the character was meant to throw a pot and lay into all the kitchen staff however, it was decided the audience wouldn’t of believed this moment. I agree it would of been too strong a character choice so early on and it was better to build up Carmy’s neurotic personality. The other change was Sydney being written into the pilot as originally she was introduced in the third episode.

The trickiest skill was cutting a cartouche

Okay, I had no idea what that meant but it is when in the pilot episode there is wax paper being cut which is used to trap steam. Apparently, it was really hard to cut into a circle and the cast had more knife skill training than cutting a cartouche!

Jeremy had a say in designing his character’s tattoos

Tattoos are usually significant to people’s lives and back stories which is why as an actor it’s useful to know what everything means. However, Jeremy went a step further and worked with the tattoo aritst Ben Shields to actually help design the tattoos for Carmy, pretty cool. One of Carmy’s tattoos is 773 which is the area code for Chicago and according to the tattoo artist Jeremy told Vulture he said this was a: “Very safe first thing to get.” 

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Featured images via Disney+