The Bear is this season’s must-watch food show

Forget reality television, drama is where it’s at right now with respect to food programming. At least according to Helen Rosner and my food-loving friends who live in Chicago, who highly recommend The Bear, which is streaming on FX and Hulu. The Bear is a fictionalized account of a top-tier chef who leave’s the “world’s best” restaurant in NYC to take over his family’s beef sandwich shop in Chicago following his brother’s suicide.

Full disclosure: although this is on my list of things to watch, I haven’t had time to view any episodes. However, after reading Rosner’s review and hearing from my good friends, it is definitely next in the queue. Rosner describes it as a “gritty fairy tale of cooking and grief” that convincingly portrays what it’s like to work in a restaurant kitchen. The drama is so spot-on that Genevieve Yam, a former fine-dining cook, wrote in Bon Appétit that “It was so accurate that it was triggering.”

Aside from getting the inner workings of the kitchen right, the show also faithfully depicts Chicago according to some life-long residents that I have talked to. If you’ve ever wondered about what the Windy City was like, this show should give you a solid basic understanding. The storyline seems compelling as well, apart from what Rosner describes as a “frankly ludicrous deus ex machina” in the final episode – although that is what leads to a season 2, so it’s probably worth it.