What if a profession or institution devoted to looking after others stops caring and stops nurturing?
“We cook to nurture people.” Years before the events that make up the bulk of The Bear’s third season, real-life acclaimed chef Thomas Keller relayed this mission statement from his mentor to fictional chef Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) in a flashback to Carmy’s first day at the French Laundry. But what if a profession or institution devoted to looking after others stops caring and stops nurturing? What if salt, one of the most basic elements of the kitchen, loses its saltiness? Season 3 of The Bear, especially when viewed against its first two seasons, stands as a warning against the kind of mission drift that can rob a caring institution of its hospitality. This is a tragedy to be mourned as the show portrays it, and the church would do well to pay heed to how deeply our culture desires genuine care and welcome.
We don’t hear Keller’s dictum until the opener of the season 3 finale, yet the writers of The Bear stack reminders of the chef’s calling like dishes on a packed Saturday night. The gamut of characters, both leading and supporting, each have a moment throughout the series when they are connected to caring. The Bear (the restaurant, not the show by the same name), however, is wildly dysfunctional and uncaring by the end of the season, leading to multiple broken relationships, possible staff upheaval, inconsistent service that even the team members recognize as “off,” and a less-than-stellar review that threatens their financial future.
Carmy’s career to this point has been defined by the pull between two opposing views of professional cooking. Keller, Chef Andrea Terry (Olivia Coleman), and the life-affirming approach of the restaurant Noma all point Carmy to a kind of demanding professionalism, not despite but because of how much they care about their diners. This kind of cooking brings, renews, and celebrates life. On the other hand, Chef David (Joel McHale) only focuses on a coldly defined excellence for its own sake. That which he praises is utterly disconnected from those who actually consume the food. As Carmy narrates, “I don’t think he sleeps. I don’t think he eats. I don’t think he loves.” For my part, I don’t think I’ve heard a worse indictment of a hospitality professional.
The closest season 3 gives us to an exact moment when Carmy fully surrenders to the pull of the same abusive, traumatic, neglectful path occurs when he decides to change the menu every day “so they can see what we’re capable of.” You probably won’t find this line in any lists detailing the best quotes from season 3, but it is a crucial inflection point, informing the trajectory for the restaurant and the rest of the season. It isn’t the decision itself to change the menu but Carmy’s reason why that shows how far he’s strayed. This justification, along with his other non-negotiables, are the workings of a chef no longer cooking to nurture people; Carmy is on an impossible quest for smudgeless perfectionism in the critical eyes of “them.” By the time Carmy has a long-awaited confrontation with the emptiness found in David’s approach, he’s already been leading his own restaurant in the way of David for weeks.
We as a species were made to break bread together, whether we’re celebrating or consoling.
We shouldn’t miss how the writers portray this mission drift. With the exception of flashbacks and supporting characters attempting to keep the fire alive on their own, both the viewer and the diner are bombarded by chaotic, disjointed menus and service that looks at numbers and dollars where we once saw faces and people. Food, previously the unspoken shining star of the show, borders on the grotesque in its repetition and jarring camera angles. By contrast, the filming in previous seasons often reveled in beautiful dishes, showing us that the show’s crew bears no ill will against high-end cooking, but instead against what happens when food is no longer made as an act of caring.
Particularly telling is that while anger is never far away in season 3 there is something else choking The Bear: an empty, gnawing hunger. Sound mixing that jostles between overstimulating and genuinely haunting, increasing use of cool tones, the blurry editing of elapsed time running together, and the ugly gratuitousness of broken dishes and meaningless plates all read like a living thing struggling for air before succumbing to void and decay. The writers could have relied solely on profanity and thrown pots to tell the story of inhospitable hospitality, but this immersive approach invites us to feel it. What we’re given is worse than cacophony: at least rage is alive. What we feel instead in the dull dining room and uncaring kitchen is death—death of purpose and death of love. If you finished season 3 of this show about a restaurant feeling oddly unsatisfied and hungry, you experienced the grim irony for which the writers aimed.
Season 3 of The Bear works so well because of its visceral impact, taking us from the hope of revitalizing a place of hospitality and delivering us into the pain of its collapse. We as a species were made to break bread together, whether we’re celebrating or consoling. We tend to be remarkably adept at knowing when the plate before us is empty or the server forgot us. Most of us have encountered a restaurant, a home, or a church where “the vibe’s weird,” as Neil Geoff Fak (Matty Matheson) says of his own employer. How fast did you want to leave if it wasn’t somewhere that mattered to you? Or how deeply do you still mourn seeing the hearthfire of welcome fade from somewhere you once felt at home? We grieve because something meant to promote life is instead starving it. Our soul knows how truly wrong that is. If that happens, there aren’t enough “perfect” dishes in the world to fill our hunger.
The connection of hospitality is my faith and therefore informs my ministry.
It is a tragedy to be mourned when a kitchen, long the heartbeat of human society, loses its purpose of caring. It is no less tragic when any other form of welcome or caring dies, and that absolutely includes the church. This is personal to me because I’m a minister, but perhaps more fundamental to my identity, I’m someone who really enjoys cooking. I love experimenting, I love creating, and I admittedly love showing off from time to time. But it’s the payoff with my loved ones that hooked me, much like several of the chefs we hear from in The Bear. I chase the high of knowing that the people I care about enjoyed the meal, but more importantly, there is no connection like knowing that they know they have a place at the table.
The connection of hospitality, to be succinct, is my faith and therefore informs my ministry. It’s why the show caught my attention so quickly, and it’s why the punch of season 3 landed so well. In my own personal kitchen I’ve felt the call of chasing the next thing pressing against what people actually want, which is to be together. And in every arena of my life I constantly fight the inherently isolating thirst for perfection. As Mike Berzatto (John Bernthal) muses in a flashback, the special moments of our lives tend to be around food, especially around food with each other. I can’t do that well if I’m focused anywhere other than on the actual people I say I’m serving.
This lesson does not stop at the threshold of my kitchen. Sadly, many of us can list churches who have fallen to evil predations like abusive leaders and oppressive belief systems. But what of those who lost their focus on caring because they started chasing an ostensibly good thing for the wrong reasons? New programs, attendance numbers, budgets, or building projects can all be positives just like new recipes and massive meals, but without caring at their center each will leave us distant and hungry no matter how much we consume. A church that forgets its mission to nurture people has lost its saltiness, and salt that has lost its saltiness is at risk of being tossed out along with the countless attempted dishes Carmy sends to the trash.
Season 3 frequently raises the topic of legacy and gives us a lot to chew on with regards to what we’ll leave behind, but the most somber reminder arrives through the two funerals we witness in the present-day timeline. Early in the season, Marcus says goodbye to his mother. He tells the assembled mourners that he enjoyed just sitting in the kitchen while his mother cooked. In the finale, the cooking community bears witness to the last night of Chef Terry’s famed Ever restaurant. Richie asks to spend Ever’s last service in the kitchen rather than in the dining room for the same reason as Marcus: the respective kitchens were where they both saw the magic of caring happen, and where they learned how important it is.
We often think about who might come to our personal funerals, but if the church we attend were to close and held a funerary farewell meal like the one held at Ever, who would show up? Would anyone ask to stay in the kitchen one last time? Would they want to avoid the ugly arguments, unloved recipes, and distracted service of a people too busy chasing other things, or would they see where the magic happens? If we’ve done our job, they can look at our efforts and say along with Chef Thomas Keller, “It’s all about nurturing.”
