The Bear on FX: aka HEARD! aka YES CHEF! aka Ketamine Gene Wilder cooks for u

one thing I'll say for this show is that it revitalized my son's interest in cooking; he made that omelette this morning, complete with sour cream and onion chips.

You know what else I hate? The “feel awkward after asking someone out and them not immediately realising so now we both talk over each other and to reassure that this wasn’t a dating proposal and we feel awkward and we keep talking over each other and this is awkward and hahaha do you get it” trope. Please remove this from all future televised media. And I love Sydney and Marcus! Great characters! Great chemistry! Why do you have to put that awful scene in there?

Ctrl+F "I wear suits now"

ha yes I loved that

Finished this morning and broadly loved it. I finished S1 and thought anything else was unnecessary but discovered that I did want to spend more time with these characters after all.

I found the Christmas episode too much, tbh. When it finished, I was pretty vocally like 'I don't know that I needed that in my life!' I got they were fucked up but jeez, I don't know that I needed my nose rubbing in it. (Not questioning the performances though. Some extraordinary acting.)

I'm interested in how it fetishes work and the work ethic, but at the same time seems to want to disassociate that from actual money, which seems very abstract to everyone involved - to the point that it's hard to work out how everyone actually survives day-to-day. The final scene of S1, where there is literally a mound of magic money seems to speak to this. I guess it's partly a commentary on the characters' attitude to their 'art' and lack of business acumen.

Richie "i wear suits now" reminded me of It's Hard-era John Entwistle

https://imgur.com/a/r5kGIDZ

ha!

A friend from New York (we went to school together in Chicago) was in town with his kids last night, and he wanted to get Chicago style pizza. I picked Pequod's, which he had totally forgotten was in The Bear, so he and his daughters watched the Richie episode again a couple of nights ago in preparation. No joke, within a minute of walking into the place, this young staffer starts up a quick conversation with my friend (who was wearing a very New York shirt), asks him if he's seen The Bear, and then proudly tells him the pizza's place in the show. Then, several minutes later, this young guy stops by again to talk about the filming, how there were 30 crew stuffed in this place, but how he got picked to be the guy who hands Richie his pizza. And *then*, several minutes *later*, the guy comes back *again*, totally earnest, totally proud, with the youtube clip cued up of him handing Richie the pizza. My friend loved his enthusiasm, and got a picture taken of the guy posing with the pizzas at our table and, held in his hand like a first prize trophy, his own phone, with his claim to fame episode cameo freeze-framed on the screen.

We figured he must do this all the time, but we loved it.

I hope you kept the moment going with many post-story questions about the experience. In all sincerity, that is really sweet

Ha, that's kinda sweet but cringe. I talked to a friend who waited tables there for years, and she said that she didn't recognize that guy. :)

I don't think he was a server, I think he was either a kitchen guy or a runner or something like that. I don't know, we thought it was pretty innocent and endearing. Didn't feel cringe.

Loved this season and Richie's arc, as mentioned, but didn't feel the Claire thread at all. She just seemed so desperate — you're smart, successful, attractive; don't you have other prospects?

Was it good?

I haven't had chicago style pizza probably since the early 90s. I'm kinda curious. I remember loving it. I'm sure I'll love it. That place looked great. There was some other place that I think Bourdain went to, maybe it was out in the burbs or something, but old school and also looked good. When I was a kid I loved coming into NYC and going to UNO. I was a dumb kid.

I think Bourdain may have gone to ... Burt's? Up in Morton Grove. Burt iirc was either the original owner of Pequod's or maybe their chief pizza maker. You had to order in advance at Burt's (iirc 48 hours) because he made a limited amount of dough each day. Anyway, Burt has since passed, but his place still exists. It was either Burt's or Burt at Pequod's that pioneered the caramelized crust.

Pequod's is great, but of course, the irony of Chicago deep dish is that while most people, Chicagoans or not, enjoy it, the only time we generally order it is when someone comes in from out of town and is all "Chicago style pizza! Chicago style pizza!" So we dutifully get Chicago style pizza, and it's good, and then the people go home and tell all their friends about the Chicago style pizza ("It's good," "It's a little much," "It's not a pizza," whatever), and everyone everywhere else thinks Chicago is all about the Chicago style pizza. Meanwhile, in Chicago, it's all about the tavern cut. And hot dogs. Even New Yorkers, they might like to dismiss Chicago style pizza and boast of their pizza (which is tbh really just default "pizza;" the best NY pizza places that people talk about are usually Neapolitan style, and you can get great Neapolitan anywhere from Chicago to Phoenix), but New Yorkers know better than to pick a fight with Chicago hot dogs.

For sure, have had classic chicago hot dogs and visited hot dougs when that was a thing.

But while this may not be the thread for it, I'm gonna have to seriously disagree with your comments about new york pizza. Neapolitan style pizza is all over the city and great, and we have some of the best I'm sure, but New York pizza is really more about the good slice joints and I think most of the best newer pizza places have more in common with a sort of elevated new york slice joint slice than it does with the classic neapolitan. The days of Motorino and Roberta's version of neapolitan pizza being the height of new york pizza I think has been replaced by places like L'Industrie, Scarrs, Paulie Gee's Slice Shop, Philomena's. All of which are probably closer to classic slice joints to fancy 10" neapolitan pies.

The really old-school NY places, where pizza as we know it was invented, the Lombardi's and it's offshoots like John's, Grimaldis, Patsy's etc, is more neapolitan than slice joint, but these days I think you're better off with Johns of Bleeker or Best Pizza in williamsburg. Di Faras etc.

I just want to eat L&B all the time, which maybe shows a hankering for deeper dish pizza!

But I'm more about checking out NJ Bar pies these days.

And this is supposed to be the joint, not bar pies but the pies are named by the style of the year: https://santillopizza.com/

Just got back from a visit to Chicago and Pequod's is definitely good (didn't know it was featured in the Bear). I recommend getting extra cheese. Also went to Piece, a microbrewery/pizzeria co-owned by Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick that serves new haven style pizza.

Pequod's is excellent, as is piece. The tourist spot is usually Uno, which is very good but not the best. If you grew up in or around Chicago, the default places were whatever your local tavern style place was (my local-ish favorites below). The local chain Barnaby's was outstanding though my go-to location in Schaumburg closed a number of years ago. Giordano's is good though definitely not nearly as legit.

https://billspizzapub.com/
https://nickspizzapub.com/
https://foxholepizza.com/

btw i meant Joe's Pizza on carmine as a classic nyc slice joint. John's of Bleeker is one of the Lombardi's offshoots.

yeah, I love a good New York slice, but in my opinion it is less that the pizza is somehow spectacular and more how good it is for such a simple thing that is relatively easy to come across and eat. I mean, it's essentially the pizza I ate growing up in Pennsylvania, and likely the pizza people ate in New Jersey, and so on.Just pizza, imo, not an idiosyncratic offshoot, like Chicago pizza, or New Haven pizza, or Detroit Pizza, etc.

Like, I wish I could just get a slice in Chicago,
but it's not really a thing here.

The really old-school NY places, where pizza as we know it was invented, the Lombardi's and it's offshoots like John's, Grimaldis, Patsy's etc, is more neapolitan than slice joint, but these days I think you're better off with Johns of Bleeker or Best Pizza in williamsburg. Di Faras etc.

I just want to eat L&B all the time, which maybe shows a hankering for deeper dish pizza!

― dan selzer, Wednesday, August 23, 2023 11:21 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Special shout out to Grimaldi's in Hoboken, which has separate indepedent ownership unlike the national chain. SUPER good.

One of my few regrets about leaving NJ is not getting to Santillo's beforehand.

But I'm more about checking out NJ Bar pies these days.

https://www.kinchleyspizza.com/

this place down the street from my home office is legit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e8sH65X-hc

I used to drive by Kinchleys a lot when I was living in montvale during the pandemic (height of), always meant to check it out.

Pequod's really getting that Bear Bump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTpu7_0vaGU

If you want to go authentic tavern style, here was a rare tip of the hat via Kenji López-Alt in the New York Times (which often struggles to grasp Chicago, or any place that is not New York):

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/dining/tavern-thin-crust-pizza-chicago.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mIbyUgNOlo

Finally watched The Bear and yeah good stuff

we just got to the christmas episode. good times! jlc’s sauce hands are some of the most cursed imagery in recent memory

this is a very loud show! i like the restaurants scenes, i'm not so big on the family stuff. i think the family should be like the alien in ridley scott's alien - oft mentioned and referred to but never seen. the christmas episode, too much shouting and big emotions, okay throw the fork or don't throw the fork, chekhov's fork who cares whatever.

i recognize that the writers intended for the family to be a big part of the show, from episode 1 of the first season. but the writers also did the stupid tomato ex machina ending of the first season.

at the end of the day i think a little psycho restaurant guy can just be a little psycho restaurant guy without needing a big backstory to explain why he's a little psycho restaurant guy. sometime psychos are just psychos!

Maybe, but we wouldn't have gotten those amazing performances from JLC and Odenkirk!

jlc sauce hands

IDK I think the family stuff is great but I agree that it works better as background than foreground; when we're kinda just given hints as to what these relationships and history are all about

I found series 2 harder to get through, and there were a few things in it I didn’t like (mainly the whole Claire storyline, and the series being so much based around having to open a restaurant against such a tight deadline). Series 1 was almost flawless for me, except for the series ending.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/the-bear-renewed-season-3-fx-hulu-1235781001/

Worried about diminishing returns setting in here. I hope S3 is the last

The answer to the question we've all been asking: https://hard-drive.net/hd/entertainment/fx-confirms-the-bear-season-3-will-require-no-prior-mcu-knowledge/

They say that now, but then the Blob'll show up in Ep 5 or something.

Gonna be funny if Carmy shows up super jacked (because Jeremy Allen White played a pro wrestler in a movie in between seasons) and absolutely no explanation is offered.

I think he's been super jacked all along, they just hide it well

They'll reveal that's the real way he got out of the freezer

Just hulked his way out

https://media.vogue.co.uk/photos/6471ec8f07c77016fcc85adb/2:3/w_2560%2Cc_limit/001.jpg

I mean, dude is already pretty jacked in the show

https://media.vogue.co.uk/photos/6471ec8f07c77016fcc85adb/2:3/w_2560%2Cc_limit/001.jpg

I mean, dude is already pretty jacked in the show

mmmmhmmm

Should have made him a baker, got baker guns.

in other JAW news, I saw recently that he's apparently dating Rosalia, love that kind of random celeb pairing

I think he's been super jacked all along, they just hide it well

They absolutely do not hide it well. It was a small thing that annoyed me about the first season. This is not a man who goes to the gym, but look at him. The set dressers could at least have put a set of weights in his spartan apartment.