Chaos in the kitchen with The Bear and Boil­ing Point

The key to good cook­ing is bal­ance. A meal with no salt is bland, add too much and it’s ruined. Recre­at­ing a restau­rant on screen needs that same bal­ance: chaot­ic but with pur­pose; lone­ly but com­mu­nal; cut-throat but with heart. Cap­tur­ing that spe­cif­ic envi­ron­ment – a swirling pres­sure-cook­er of clash­ing per­son­al­i­ties where the lines between love and hate blur – has been attempt­ed on-screen time and time again. There’s some­thing irre­sistible about that set­ting so we watch every time and almost every time, it doesn’t quite work. This year though, the impos­si­ble hap­pened – the chaos of the pro­fes­sion­al kitchen was cap­tured bril­liant­ly not once, but twice.

The Bear was the show of the sum­mer in the US and final­ly hits UK screens this week on Dis­ney+. It fol­lows the sto­ry of Car­men ​‘Carmy’ Berzat­to, a world-renowned chef who returns to Chica­go to take over The Beef, the beloved but dete­ri­o­rat­ing neigh­bour­hood sand­wich shop left to him by his late broth­er Mikey. Tense and wicked­ly fun­ny, The Bear has been praised for its sear­ing micro­cos­mic depic­tions of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty, addic­tion, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, cap­i­tal­ism, and grief. It does all this effort­less­ly by first nail­ing the fun­da­men­tals, cre­at­ing a restau­rant envi­ron­ment that feels so real it often makes you want to hang up your apron and switch careers immediately.

There are pre­cur­sors to The Bear which have also attempt­ed to por­tray the pro­fes­sion­al kitchen to vary­ing degrees of suc­cess. Stan­ley Tuc­ci and Camp­bell Scott’s Big Night hails from a time where the most you saw of the kitchen was a peak through the swing­ing door. As a result, while the kitchen is clas­sic and beau­ti­ful, it didn’t need to be espe­cial­ly accu­rate. The two-per­son kitchen staff pro­duce a stag­ger­ing amount of food, for exam­ple, tal­ent­ed as Pri­mo is. It does, how­ev­er, cap­ture the des­per­ate com­pro­mise a strug­gling restau­rant has to make as well as the frus­tra­tion of dif­fi­cult cus­tomers – any wait­er can relate to the bat­tle between pla­cat­ing a cus­tomer who wants spaghet­ti with her risot­to, and a chef whose reac­tion is ​“She’s a crim­i­nal, I want to talk to her”.

In Chef, Jon Favreau’s real-life expe­ri­ence makes for a con­vinc­ing, if rose-tint­ed, depic­tion of the pres­sures of a renowned chef on the down­swing. A feel-good film more about fam­i­ly than food, Chef’s kitchen scenes can’t be too unbear­able, instead tak­ing those rare shin­ing moments of peace before the cus­tomers file in and imbu­ing them with des­per­a­tion. An hon­ourable men­tion goes to Brad Bird’s Rata­touille too, in which Pixar bring their trade­mark real­ism to an old-fash­ioned French kitchen where the only thing that doesn’t feel plau­si­ble is Remy the Rat Chef.

But there are many more food­ie films that miss the mark. John Wells’ Burnt star­ring Bradley Coop­er fea­tures bizarre assump­tions about the inner work­ings of Miche­lin inspec­tors, exhibits stag­ger­ing­ly waste­ful plate-smash­ing, and the unfath­omable shuck­ing of one mil­lion oys­ters, but it’s the gen­er­al feel of the film though that doesn’t work. It over­shoots on chaos, feel­ing more like a script note to ​“look busy” than a func­tion­ing kitchen. Burnt also ramps up the arche­typ­al tyran­ni­cal chef to the nines. It’s true that chefs are often intense, but Cooper’s depic­tion is miss­ing a method to that mad­ness. On the oth­er end of the spec­trum are films where the ener­gy is miss­ing entire­ly. Rom-coms are often most guilty of this, films like No Reser­va­tions and Lit­tle Italy don’t seem to care too much about what restau­rants actu­al­ly feel like, so long as they make a good back­drop for romance. Fair enough real­ly, but it’s jar­ring for any­one who acci­den­tal­ly came for the food.

One of the rea­sons The Bear works so well is that the restau­rant is nev­er just a set­ting. The rela­tion­ships in The Bear aren’t hap­pen­ing in between cook­ing scenes – they’re con­stant­ly on the go. You under­stand more about Syd­ney (the show’s true hero, played by the bril­liant Ayo Ede­biri) through her deter­mi­na­tion to get Carmy to notice her ideas mid-shift than you ever could through unnat­ur­al dia­logue exchanged when the grills are shut off.

As he patch­es flesh wounds rather than address­ing emo­tion­al ones, Mikey’s best friend Richie’s (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) unre­solved grief is revealed more than it ever could be if the cam­eras fol­lowed him home. Silence says as much as dia­logue in the inter­ac­tions between its the com­plex, lov­able (most of the time) cast of char­ac­ters, but the restau­rant is alive and all con­sum­ing, with the lives of its staff often tak­en over by their jobs, leav­ing lit­tle space for much else.

The oth­er tri­umph of culi­nary arts in pop cul­ture this year is Boil­ing Point, Philip Barantini’s one-take film released in Jan­u­ary. Boil­ing Point dif­fers from The Bear in set­ting – set on the busiest night of the year in a high-end Lon­don restau­rant – and has none of The Bear’s com­e­dy to unknot the ago­nis­ing ten­sion. Like The Bear though, the restau­rant swal­lows every­thing. As head chef Andy (Steven Gra­ham) des­per­ate­ly tries to keep his life togeth­er in snatched phone-calls in the back alley, he gets dragged in all direc­tions, anx­ious­ly spin­ning plates to keep things on track. In any hasty moments of res­o­lu­tion your brain is still scream­ing out to the char­ac­ters to pay atten­tion to what’s hap­pen­ing off-cam­era (“No! Stop! The dressing!”).

Episode sev­en of The Bear is also large­ly edit­ed as though it’s a sin­gle take, in which things tru­ly come to a head for Carmy, result­ing in a mass staff walk­out. It’s a tough watch but stretch those unin­ter­rupt­ed eigh­teen min­utes – where every­thing that can go wrong, does go wrong – over an excru­ci­at­ing hour-and-a-half and you’ve got Boil­ing Point.

Both The Bear and Boil­ing Point fea­ture harsh words exchanged, but there’s always a sense of com­radery. The team pulls togeth­er, things said in the heat of the moment under­stood to be fleet­ing, with pride often swal­lowed in a swift apol­o­gy. The shouty, sweary chef stereo­type is often true, but it can be under­stood as Carmy sprints across town to flog jeans in exchange for ingre­di­ents, or Andy sleeps on the office floor due to not hav­ing time to hunt for a new flat. These strug­gles soft­en them, and their staff catch glimpses and take pity, will­ing to with­stand a few rants or pick up the slack. It’s tox­ic, yes, but not with­out heart.

Both pieces of media also shine in the small moments we spend with sec­ondary char­ac­ters, illus­trat­ing that dozens of rela­tion­ships that are play­ing out at any giv­en moment in a restau­rant. Boil­ing Point has the moth­er­ly ten­der­ness between pas­try chef Emi­ly (Han­nah Wal­ters) and her young, trou­bled pro­tégée Jamie (Stephen McMil­lan) or the in-fight­ing between the pot-wash team as Andy defends drug-deal­ing slack­er Jake (Daniel Larkai). The Bear has Mat­ty Matheson’s charm­ing but under­achiev­ing handy­man Neil and the heart­break­ing tear-down of everybody’s favourite pas­try chef dream­er Mar­cus (Lionel Boyce).

This isn’t to say that on-screen depic­tions of restau­rants need to be hyper-real­is­tic to be enjoy­able, or that every­body watch­ing cares about real­ism. Burnt is fun because it’s so ham-fist­ed; Chef would be less heart-warm­ing if it didn’t have the grit­ti­er ele­ments of restau­rant work bright­ened; rom-coms have a com­fort­ing for­mu­la to fol­low where nobody’s watch­ing to be stressed out. The allure of the set­ting though comes in two parts: a desire to peak behind the cur­tain for those who don’t have expe­ri­ence, or for those that do, to see it reflect­ed back.

All these chefs share one thing: the dri­ve to cre­ate beau­ti­ful food. There’s some­thing tan­ta­lis­ing about see­ing all that pas­sion and ded­i­ca­tion poured into one small plate of per­fect food. The Bear and Boil­ing Point are not always exact­ly enjoy­able, but the view­er feels right there along­side the team, giv­ing every­thing to try and make some­thing great.