Cook Your Way Through the Food in 'The Bear,' From Italian Beef to Focaccia
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We'll do our best to avoid spoilers, but in the first two seasons of The Bear, there's plenty of culinary inspiration — often served with family trauma, but we're focused on the pastries, pasta, and meat here. In the show, Carmen "Carmy” Berzatto (played by Jeremy Allen White), Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), and Marcus (Lionel Boyce) develop as chefs and human beings as they try to transform Carmy's family’s Chicago Italian Beef shop into the fine dining restaurant of their dreams.
Related: How "The Bear" Chocolate Cake Became the Star of the Show
Like a lot of people in the food world, we are inspired and entertained by the show. And, watching it makes us very hungry. Here are 21 recipes connected to or inspired by the show for you to make while watching, from Sydney's Cola-Braised Short Ribs with Risotto to Orange-Cardamom Buns, a date-night Bucatini, and of course, that incredible Chocolate Cake.
Ube Basque Cakes
These tender and flaky mini cakes were created by F&W 2022 Best New Chefs Timothy Flores and Genie Kwon, and served at Kasama, their modern Filipino bakery and restaurant in Chicago that is a big point of inspiration for Sydney and Carmy. The buttery cakes are filled with a creamy and mildly sweet ube pastry cream and tart huckleberries, and are finished with a sprinkling of powdered sugar (the shape of the powdered sugar is in the shape of the sun design from the flag of the Philippines).
Pancetta-Beef Burgers with Horseradish Ketchup
After one bite of these decadent beef burgers from Chicago's Avec, you'll understand why Sydney went there to get inspiration from chef de cuisine Dylan Patel and partner Donnie Madia. The secret to these burgers, created by former Avec chef Koren Grieveson, is the ground pancetta mixed into the ground beef, which bastes the burgers from the inside.
Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter
Season 1 ended with a spaghetti dinner made with a simple tomato sauce inspired by Marcella Hazan's famous sauce. "This is the simplest of all sauces to make, and none has a purer, more irresistibly sweet tomato taste," she wrote in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. "I have known people to skip the pasta and eat the sauce directly out of the pot with a spoon."
Classic Croissants
Croissants and other laminated pastries figure in Marcus' development as a pastry chef. This recipe from Food & Wine food editor Paige Grandjean is the perfect way to start making butter croissants at home. In France, this style of croissant is often rolled straight, since croissants made with margarine are required by French law to be turned in like a crescent moon.
Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza
Stacy Allen / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall
This iconic — and famously controversial — pizza is loaded with sausage, sauce, and two kinds of cheese for one of the heartiest slices you'll ever have, in a fine dining restaurant or anywhere else.
Roasted Branzino with Caper Butter
Diana Chistruga
Without giving away too much from Season 2's "Fishes" episode, we'll just say that everyone could use an easy, no-fail branzino recipe. Whole branzino roasted with lemon and rosemary is a foolproof way to ensure flavorful, perfectly cooked fish. A caper compound butter takes the dish over the top.
Chicken Piccata
Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Debbie Wee
Courtney Storer, the culinary producer for The Bear, is the former culinary director of the Italian restaurant Jon + Vinny’s in L.A. This quick version of the Italian-American classic chicken piccata comes from the restaurant; we're guessing it was part of the inspiration for this dish to have been a Berzatto family favorite.
Orange-Cardamom Morning Buns
Watching Marcus explore Copenhagen — and later, create his own honey buns inspired by his trip — gave us a craving for these morning buns, which are scented with cardamom. Honey goes into the dough and the buttery filling, which is also flavored with orange zest, cinnamon, and cardamom. The filling is not only rolled up into the dough, but brushed on the baked buns as well, creating a delightfully gooey and sticky topping.
Bucatini Carbonara
Italian carbonara is famously rich, combining pancetta or guanciale (cured pork jowl), egg yolks, and cheese. Paired with bucatini, it's perfect for any date night. At Atlanta's Holeman and Finch, chef Linton Hopkins adds a Southern accent to the dish with house-cured pork and local eggs.
Buttery Brioche Hot Dog Buns
In the first season, viewers were surprised to see that the buns for The Beef's Italian beef sandwiches were made in-house. Now that we know Carmy and Marcus better, we’re not surprised to see that attention to quality and detail. We think they’d be all over Chicago-style hot dogs on these brioche buns. For a Chicago-style dog, top the buns with a beef hot dog, then add yellow mustard (never ketchup!), a dill pickle spear, finely chopped white onion, sweet pickle relish, tomato slices, pickled sport peppers, and as a final touch, a dash of celery salt. This dog is a special one.
Ham and Cheese Danish
This buttery ham and cheese pastry was inspired by one of the most popular offerings in the pastry case at Chicago's Kasama, Genie Kwon and Tim Flores' bakery by day and fine dining restaurant at night. The flaky pastry balances sweet and savory flavors from the nutty Gruyère cheese sauce, salty ham, and crunchy turbinado sugar. At Kasama, they finish it off with a drizzle of black pepper caramel, but to make this at home, warm honey seasoned with black pepper creates a similar effect.
Over-the-Top Ice Cream Sundaes with Homemade Caramel
We'll confess that the giant ice cream sundae Sydney enjoys at Chicago's Margie's Candies caught our eye, and had us dreaming of the giant bowls of ice cream at this classic spot. Fully loaded with creamy fudge, salty pretzels, crunchy toffee, and chewy, bittersweet candied lemon peel, this over-the-top sundae gets drenched in homemade caramel sauce for a grown-up take on a nostalgic childhood treat.
Doughnuts in Cardamom Syrup
Marcus began his quest to be a better pastry chef by making doughnuts over and over again in Season 1. If you are similarly inspired, try this recipe. Dipping these doughnuts in cardamom-rose water syrup and sliced almonds gives them an extra layer of flavor and a nutty, crunchy texture.
Boursin Omelet
This beautifully basic omelet is the perfect thing for Sydney to make Natalie as they work on getting the restaurant open. It features Boursin, the spreadable garlic-herb cheese, which melts richly into the creamy center of the tender eggs. We love this omelet with a crusty baguette, a crisp salad, and a glass of Chardonnay, but if you want to scatter some potato chips on top à la Sydney, go for it.
Braciole
Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen
This cozy dish of rolled meat stuffed with breadcrumbs and cheese and cooked in tomato sauce is a staple at Italian dinners for families like the Berzattos, and for good reason. The meat — typically beef, veal, or pork — is pounded thin and stuffed with prosciutto, breadcrumbs, cheese, and herbs. It can be grilled, pan-fried, or braised in sauce.
Cola-Braised Short Ribs with Risotto
Frederick Hardy II / Food Styling by Torie Cox / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen
If a single dish created the opportunity to turn Mr. Beef into The Bear, it was this dish, which Sydney spent much of Season 1 tinkering with before it caught the eye of a local restaurant critic. On television and in real life, nothing is cozier than a Dutch oven filled with braised, fall-off-the-bone tender short ribs served over risotto. Here, per Sydney’s creativity, the classic wine and stock braising liquid get a surprising addition from cola, which balances the savory with a touch of complex sweetness to create a smooth, rich sauce.
Oysters Rockefeller
This renowned baked oyster dish was created at Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans in 1899 by the proprietor, Jules Alciatore. According to legend, the dish was created as a substitute for baked snails, which were hard to obtain from France. It was named in honor of John D. Rockefeller, at that time one of the world's richest men, because of the sauce's intense richness. Emeril Lagasse’s version would fit in well at a Berzatto family dinner.
Cannoli
Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Torie Cox / Prop Styling by Josh Hoggle
A classic cannoli becomes a big point of inspiration for the cooks on the show. They take it far away from its origins here, in which crisp and flaky pastry dough is shaped into a tube and filled with rich citrus-scented ricotta-mascarpone filling.
Focaccia
Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Christina Daley
We think every fine dining meal should start with this pillowy, soft focaccia. It gets its unbeatable flavor from lots of olive oil, plus fresh rosemary and flaky salt on top. We love it with charcuterie, pasta, salad, or as the base for decadent sandwiches.
Italian Beef Sandwiches
Fred Hardy / Food Styling by Melissa Gray / Prop Styling by Shell Royster
Topped with bright homemade giardiniera and roasted sweet peppers, this take on Italian beef sandwiches has lots of beefy flavor and a deeply satisfying jus.
'The Bear' Chocolate Cake
Christopher Testani / Food Styling by Torie Cox / Prop Styling by Christina Daley
Of course, we can't forget this cake, which was created by Chicago pastry chef Sarah Mispagel-Lustbader for The Bear, and was featured on the cover of our March 2023 issue of the magazine. It layers an airy chocolate mousse between a fudgy chocolate cake and tops the whole thing off with a rich chocolate frosting.
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