This is fantastic! Stars Jeremy Allen White from Shameless as a high end chef who comes back to take over the family Chicago sandwich joint. Watched the first couple of episodes and everything about it is wonderful. Very realistic kitchen scenes, lots of tension, etc. Great supporting cast, wonderful writing. Highly recommended.
This looks a lot like Boiling Point, the 2021 one-take film starring the brilliant Stephen Graham as a chef.
Honestly this is my favorite show I've seen this year, and it's already been a great year for TV, IMO.
It's pretty well done and avoids the over-played Chicago cliches for the most part. I will say that locating the restaurant in current day River North is pretty ridiculous as that area has been thoroughly gentrified for a decade.
They do mention at least a couple of times how the neighborhood is changing and in once scene show a bar that has recently been shut down so I think there is at least some attention paid to that. But it's interesting nonetheless that I haven't read from any reviewer how they blew it on that.
Yes, they mention that, but it's 10+ years out of date! The Bear: At Last, A Chicago Show For People Who Are Not From Chicago And Have Never Stepped Foot There
Well, I haven't been to Chicago, ever, so this doesn't matter to me one bit. But being from Boston, and having spent a lot of time in other places like NYC and San Francisco I've watched other shows that took fictional liberty with details similar to those cities and again it's just not important to me as long as the main thrust of the show is as good as this one is. It's a tv show. Is the story good, is the acting good? Is it believable? For me yes on all the above.
Born and raised there, 1958-1972, my son suggested this series to me, and I enjoyed it as I was looking to be entertained and not doing a research paper on accuracy. Also, I've now added South Side to my list on HBO Max. Favorite Chicago moment(s) on a TV show : Gladstone Bakery being mentioned twice on ER.
True. I mean, for every show like Cheers, which presents a realistic view of a functioning neighborhood bar in Boston, you have a bunch of wannabes.
The story's fine. The acting is excellent across the board. It's not particularly believable, imo, and of course that's fine (I'm going to watch episode 7 tonight...). Should you ever find yourself in Chicago do try Mr. Beef on Orleans. It's a pretty good example of a classic Italian beef sandwich (although I'm more partial to Johnnie's in Elmwood Park myself).
Having worked in those types of restaurants, with several folks like those in the show, I find it very believable and realistic.
Watched 6(?) episodes last night. It was so realistic that at some point I felt like I was watching a documentary. I did enough time in a kitchen in high school that a lot of it rang true. I'm not sure the explosion of online orders on day one of their new system was entirely believable though.
While I agree that the online order scene was a little out of ordinary, I've been witness to takeout system insanity that was similar to that, especially with new restaurants. For the sake of why they had this happen to show how damaged the main character is I was ok with it.
My wife and I argued about whether or not that was her for a while until I looked it up (and found out she was right).
In a way I want a season 2, but then again...who wants to watch the restaurant to get gentrified and expensive?
Helluva show. Started a little slow for me, but caught fire quickly. Not very often we see new quality programs like this. Highly recommended. Bring on season 2.
We just started it last night after watching an episode of The Old Man. Looks interesting and will give it a further whirl.
That’s pretty funny - my wife and I started watching The Bear last night and planned to watch our first episode of The Old Man. However we liked The Bear so much we watched 3 episodes instead and called it a night.