No, Chef.
'The Bear' is one of the decade’s hit TV shows. But for people with professional kitchen experience, it’s a reminder of the stresses of toxic restaurant culture.
Back in February, The Telegraph published an article where 70 female chefs spoke about sexism and inequality in professional kitchens. So, I decided to share a piece I wrote ahead of the third season of The Bear. After my article got axed from print (it happens), it became abundantly clear that nothing had changed.
In the first season of The Bear—an award-winning kitchen-set drama series that debuted in 2022—the lead character, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), has a flashback to his New York fine-dining past in which a militant chef (Joel McHale) criticizes his every move. “Why are you so slow? Why are you so fucking slow? Why?” asks the chef in a disturbing monotone. “You think you’re so tough. Yeah. Why don’t you say this? Say, ‘Yes, Chef, I’m so tough,’” he goes on, the intimidation factor rising. “Yes, Chef, I’m so tough,” replies Carmy as he plates food for waiting diners. “You are not tough. You are bullshit. You are talentless. You should be dead,” his boss responds. Carmy blinks and tries to shake it off as he continues to work—and the scene ends.
As a former chef and restaurateur, I remember that specific brand of suffocating anxiety so well. Take, for example, the time an egomaniac hotel chef competing in Canada’s Great Kitchen Party (an annual culinary competition that aims to “elevate and celebrate excellence in Canadian culture”) chose to introduce himself to me by saying “If you go over the garnish in my terrine, I’ll fucking kill you.” To make matters worse, I was just there to make the day go smoother as a voluntary set of extra plating hands. Then there was the time in London, England, when a pair of sous chefs shouted, “Hey! You women make us men food!” while I was on a stage (an unpaid internship) at a prominent modern Indian restaurant. My list goes on. For many, The Bear is purely fiction. But as someone who left the restaurant industry in 2016 after six rubbish years, I can’t ignore the fact that the hit show also taps into the raw reality of countless hospitality workers worldwide who reluctantly answer physical and emotional abuse in unsafe work environments with two words: “Yes, Chef.”
Canadian and U.S. governments have long branded essential yet undervalued restaurant work as “low” or “unskilled” labour, which is a harmful message. When Not 9 to 5 (a Canadian non-profit and global leader in mental-health advocacy, training and education for the hospitality and culinary sectors) surveyed hundreds of hospitality professionals in 2019 asking if they had experienced mental-health and/or substance-use challenges, 90 percent responded yes. In 2021, as the pandemic raged on, the organization’s government-grant-funded research project found that 87 percent of participants said they felt symptoms of burnout, 84 percent flagged struggles with anxiety, 76 percent identified signs of depression and 63 percent experienced disordered eating. “Our industry is built on a foundation of systems of oppression,” says founding director Hassel Aviles. “The way this industry has been operating is the opposite of sustainable. We’ve been depleting, exploiting and dehumanizing our greatest asset, which is the people.”
The Bear (an FX show currently streaming on Disney+ in Canada) tells the story of Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, a twentysomething prodigy chef who leaves his high-end restaurant job and returns to his hometown of Chicago to take over the family sandwich shop after the heartbreaking death of his older brother. As he grapples with a carousel of emotions—at a restaurant he never wanted—Carmy reverts to the 19th-century French-brigade system (a classic military-inspired kitchen hierarchy commonly found in hotels and fine-dining establishments that dehumanizes staff in the name of maximizing efficiency) and “Yes, Chef” leadership antics that caused much of his own kitchen trauma. With beautiful cinematography, brilliant writing and stellar acting all contributing to the show’s three Golden Globes, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and 10 Emmy wins—including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (White) and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Ayo Edebiri, who plays fellow chef Sydney)—this year alone, the breakout sensation is arguably the most authentic portrayal of the pressure and intensity of professional cooking we’ve ever seen on TV. Yet, for all the show does exceptionally well, it ultimately doesn’t fully consider the humanity of the people who prepare and serve food in real life.
Aviles, who worked in multiple roles across Toronto’s restaurant and hospitality industry for 23 years, tells me how her own challenges with depression, substance use and suicidal ideation were directly connected to her career. Even The Bear’s visual of the whirring printer relentlessly spewing out orders, or “chits,” was triggering for her. “My whole back flared up with hives,” she says. “I had a full-blown traumatic physical reaction to that show and the memories [it brought up]. I don’t even remember a lot of these things, but my body does.” Laura Louise Green, a Chicago-based psychotherapist who specializes in issues related to the hospitality industry, saw a similar reaction in some of her patients. "When The Bear first came out, I had so many people call me being like, ‘I haven’t worked in a restaurant in six years, and I’m having nightmares again,’” says Green, who is also the founder of Healthy Pour, a consulting firm that focuses on improving workplace mental health and well-being.
“I got through the first 20 minutes and then turned it off—it was about a month before I could watch it [again] because it was always visceral [and] my stomach [was] churning,” says Suzanne Barr, acclaimed chef, author and owner of now closed Toronto eatery Saturday Dinette, of her experience watching The Bear. “But in kitchens, you don’t often get the option to turn it off. I think that exposé of kitchen life is so needed. It’s not just about the food anymore. You need to see who touches every part of the dining experience to understand the realities and truths we don’t hear about. Why are people so silent about the treatment in kitchens? Why is mental health an area people are so scared to talk about?”
Whether it’s death by suicide, family struggles with addiction or bouts of fear and violence in 4K, trauma seems to play a lead role in The Bear. But here’s the thing: The show has never taken a trauma-informed approach when depicting these issues. “There’s no content warning, so you’re unaware of what you’re going into, and no resources are offered at the end of episodes,” says Aviles.
Considering that Canadian celebrity chef and serial restaurateur Matty Matheson is both a cast member (he plays Fak, restaurant handyman and Carmy’s childhood friend) and a producer on The Bear, that oversight seems odd. “Matty Matheson is a chef who has a very public history of substance-abuse issues and mental-health challenges,” says Green. “He’s been such an integral figure in providing resources, guidance and mentorship to the community at large; I don’t understand why [these elements] are not also on the show.” Other high-profile shows like Apple TV+’s Physical (which depicts disordered eating) and Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why (which shows graphic scenes of sexual assault, substance abuse and suicide) have offered content warnings and resources (though the latter did so only after viewer complaints), so why haven’t we seen a similar level of care from FX? (Neither the show’s production team nor Matheson were available for comment at the time of writing; Matheson, however, has used his career status to regularly advocate for improving industry standards and has even promoted the mental-health resources offered by Not 9 to 5 on social media.)
Edit: This feature was originally filed in February, 2024. By June, I had the opportunity to interview Matheson, which was my chance to ask him straight up. Have a listen to what he had to say, and let me know what you think in the comments:
From Bradley Cooper’s role as an abusive leader striving for a third Michelin star in 2015 film Burnt to Chef Skinner, the grumpy, short-tempered antagonist in Pixar’s 2007 animated flick Ratatouille, entertainment media has a long history of normalizing kitchen violence. Gordon Ramsay still perpetuates the narrative of the F-bomb-screaming chef who fires insults like “donkey” and “idiot sandwich” 22 seasons into his reality competition series Hell’s Kitchen. “From a [viewer’s] perspective, it puts abuse on display as not just a form of entertainment but an indicator of excellence, and that really concerns me,” says Green.
Food media—and its obsession with chef worshipping—is also complicit in glamourizing the cycle of abuse. René Redzepi, of famed three-Michelin-starred Noma in Copenhagen, is a prime example. Seats at Noma, which is closing its doors for regular service this year, are coveted, but the restaurant is reportedly notorious for building its entire business on the unethical unpaid labour of eager stagiaires, or interns. A 2022 Financial Times story, for example, found that staff constantly faced drastically low wages as well as dangerous work conditions, misogyny, homophobia, racism and workplace bullying. Too often, the (usually male) head chefs at these media-beloved fine-dining institutions receive public fame and attention while their staff suffer in unseen ways. The Bear treads into this territory too. From the outside, viewers might interpret certain plot points, like Carmy’s “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) polishing cutlery and learning the ropes at a three-Michelin-starred spot in Chicago, as career development. Off-screen, in reality, it is an industry-accepted form of unpaid labour or wage theft. “There are not enough consequences for that kind of harm,” says Aviles. “The biggest media outlets in the world are still highlighting Michelin-awarded restaurants that are known for wage theft, abuse and sexual harassment in the workplace.”
What The Bear, which returns for a third serving this June, has done so well is pull back the curtain to reveal some of the darkness that lurks in too many professional kitchens, and the show’s ongoing success has started a long overdue conversation about what needs to change in the industry. It’s also allowed a new generation of industry professionals—such as Asma Khan at Darjeeling Express in London, who continues to empower her Chef’s Table-famous kitchen team of immigrant women without hierarchy, and the team behind Elena in Montreal, which offers subsidized health care, shorter work weeks than most restaurants and paid overtime—to show that it’s possible to cultivate a brighter, kinder, stronger and more equitable future for staff and diners alike.
For their part, it does seem like the people involved with The Bear are aware of its impact on viewers. “I just love restaurants so much—the good, the bad. It’s rough. We’re all broken inside, and every single day, we’ve got to show up and cook…and it’s really beautiful,” Matheson said as he helped accept the show’s Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy. “All of us here get to make a show together, and we get to make people feel good or filled with anxiety or triggered.” The Bear doesn’t necessarily set out to romanticize the toxicity of professional kitchens, and I definitely don’t think the crew intends any harm when they depict such difficult, resonant and very real issues. But given how buzzy it is, it would be nice to see extra care taken for its viewers in the hospitality industry through means like content warnings and industry-specific mental-health resources (on top of info for suicide crisis helplines on episodes where the subject comes up). As Carmy starts fresh and attempts to build his dream restaurant, let’s hope he can take the heat and create a more equitable workplace in his kitchen. And if not, maybe he should hand the reins over to someone who can.
For resources and support, visit not9to5.org.
Thank you so much for writing this. As a 17 year deep chef, this really hits. So much anxiety watching the bear I DNF because of it. That interview with Matheson really was so terrible on his part for not taking responsibility when called out. Ben Shewry of Atticus I believe has also introduced the 4 day work week to protect his chefs from burn out, which I think should be an industry standard - two standard days off when you work in the hospitality industry just doesn’t cut it for rest and digest. Thank you again Aman. Your writing is right on point, as always.