This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
If The Bear feels like you’re watching the running of a real restaurant, that’s because you essentially are. All the food you see is real, and because people are actually eating it, that means rules and regulations must be followed.
The ovens and burners are on (and hot) and the refrigeration is fully operational. The actors have completed intensive culinary training and practise with their very own knife kits. They’re not pretending to cook – they really are cooking.
That’s down to The Bear’s culinary producer and co-executive producer Courtney Storer, sister of series creator Christopher Storer. “The one thing that was a non-negotiable for me was that the kitchen had to be working,” she says. “There’s heat, pressure and steam, and kitchens are dangerous.
“You’re operating around open flame, sharp knives, and heavy things that you can drop, break, slam. You’re working in a team environment where people are turning, moving and working under pressure.
“I wanted to make sure the kitchen was alive and that the actors were set up for success. They know their way around, and it’s real.”
This is no doubt one of the many reasons the show, about Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) leaving the high-flying world of fine dining to return home to Chicago to run his family’s sandwich shop (The Original Beef of Chicagoland, or The Beef), has garnered such high praise for its accuracy from hospitality professionals.
The Beef is inspired by a restaurant that Courtney and Christopher know well – Chicago’s Mr Beef, which serves up Italian beef sandwiches. “It was something that we grew up on, as a treat we’d go to Mr Beef. You would stand at the counter, order a beef, hot, dipped with giardiniera, and eat your sandwich standing up. The nostalgia of it still remains,” explains Courtney.
Joseph Zucchero founded Mr Beef in 1979 and it’s now run by his son Christopher, following his death in 2023. The two Christophers were best friends in kindergarten.
“Their friendship was really inspiring to Chris,” Courtney says of her brother. In fact, Mr Beef supplies all of the beef for the series, and Edwin Lee Gibson, who plays Ebraheim, trained with Chris [Zucchero] to finesse the Italian beef sandwiches.
Courtney grew up in a big Italian-American family and started working in restaurants when she was 15, but went on to study psychology. “I had the chef bug really early on. A lot of people discouraged me from cooking professionally, because it’s hard to make money, to make a living, to date, to build a family, all these things,” she says.
At the weekends, she was a server at Natalino’s in Chicago, which was also run by Joe Zucchero. “He took me under his wing, and he made every customer feel like he remembered them.”
Courtney went on to work at UPS (United Parcel Service) before moving to supermarket chain Whole Foods. When she was 27, she continued to work there in the day while going to culinary school in California at night, receiving classic French training.
“My brother is the biggest inspiration in my life, especially in the culinary arts. Christopher was the first person I called when I decided to pursue being a chef. He was like, ‘Go, you’re late. Get going.’ For the first time I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and I’m going to go for it.’”
She has since worked at acclaimed restaurants, including Verjus and Buvette in Paris and as Culinary Director at Jon & Vinny’s in Los Angeles, where she currently lives.
Storer was brought into the writers’ room of The Bear to talk about her experiences as a woman in the industry. “I’ve had to work in places where I’m the smallest person and people underestimate me, and that’s not always the experience of my male counterparts.”
Soon after, she explains, she became culinary producer on the show. “I love seeing my brother work. I love being able to watch him do what he does and be so good at it, and to support him.”
The Bear is deeply personal for Storer and some of the characters even have her traits (Sydney carrying a clipboard, the staff sketching ideas and writing their thoughts in journals), but who does she most relate to? “I see myself in all of them – any cook should. At times, I’ve been a Carmy, a Richie, a Sydney.”
She mentions knowing what it’s like to be a dishwasher or kitchen porter, and what it feels like to be “bad”, as well as being Tina (“stepping into a lot of responsibility without a lot of experience”); Marcus (“knowing you’re creative but not having the confidence to execute a dish just yet”); Luca (“where you go in to help and support a kitchen”); Ebraheim (“working on the sandwich station and doing to-go food all day”).
Another reason The Bear has resonated with people is because of its hyper-realistic portrayal of toxic family dynamics, grief and burnout. At the end of the fourth series, after transforming The Beef into high-end restaurant The Bear, Carmy decides to take a step back and process the unresolved trauma from his childhood, his brother’s suicide and the abuse he suffered from head chefs in the past. He leaves the business to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and his sister Natalie (Abby Elliott), and asks for Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) to be made a partner.
Courtney has spoken about mental illness and addiction in her family. When her parents got divorced, food started to take on a new meaning.
“When we were around family all together, there was this abundance. There were big holidays like you see on the show in the Fishes episode [a Christmas Eve meal in season two] and big bowls of pasta. When our family split up, a big part of our joy was pulled out from under us, so I think I pursued a food profession to get closer to recreating those dishes on my own.
“I sought out restaurants as a place of escape. They make you feel like you belong, even if it’s for an hour or two. How you can get lost in a bowl of pasta is dreamy – pasta is probably my favourite thing ever – and that’s why restaurants are so important.”
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In this fifth and final instalment, we’ll be saying goodbye to the series, but what Courtney hopes people take away from The Bear is actually nothing to do with food because, let’s be honest, the show has always been about much more than sandwiches and Michelin stars.
“There’s so much guilt and shame when you grow up in family systems like that,” she says of the Berzattos’s dysfunctional dynamic. “There’s so much repression of emotions and feelings when you’re around a lot of volatility. It can be an extremely isolating and lonely experience, because you don’t really know how to articulate what’s going on. You just know it probably isn’t good, and it probably isn’t healthy.
“It’s much more common than you think that people are struggling internally. I hope people realise they’re not alone in dysfunction, whether that’s at work or within your family dynamics. It can take a toll on you as a person, and that’s OK. Luckily, there are resources out there to help support you, whether you connect to reading, therapy, podcasts or just understanding those processes so you don’t feel like it’s ever your fault.” All together now: Yes, chef!
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The Bear season 5 will premiere on Disney+ on Friday 26 June 2026. You can sign up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month now.
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