Already from the trailer of The Bear Season 2, the term "chaos menu" is teased. But what is The Bear's Chaos Menu? Keep reading to find out more about the unorthodox cooking style!
What Is The Bear All About?
The Bear follows Carmy Berzatto, an award-winning chef who leaves a promising career after a family tragedy.
When his brother dies of suicide, Carmy leaves behind a more glamorous future in fine dining in order to take over the Original Beef of Chicagoland, his family's Italian beef sandwich shop.
In doing so, Carmy faces strained family relationships, debt, unruly staff, and more, making the transition to a small business all the harder.
The Bear's Chaos Menu Explained
"Chaos Menu" refers to the unorthodox menu that Carmy and Sydney concoct for their new restaurant, "The Bear," after the "Original Beef of Chicagoland" sandwich shop shuts down.
While their menu is unique, The Bear isn't the first to come up with this cooking style.
More widely in the culinary world, chaos cooking is a trend that celebrates the amalgamation of ingredients that wouldn't normally go together into cohesive and tasty dishes.
Real-life restaurants as well as TikTok culinary accounts have embraced this type of food preparation and the hashtag #chaoscooking can give you a good idea of what the trend entails -- not to mention recipe inspiration!
Chaos cooking can be considered to take fusion cuisine -- the culinary practice of creating a single dish out of more than one culinary tradition -- a step further.
In the context of The Bear, Carmy and Sydney's Chaos Menu, refers to an entire list of tasty dishes that use unorthodox ingredient combos.
What Are Chaos Menu's Recipes?
Since The Bear is still a work of fiction rather than a cooking reality show, it's hard to know exactly what types of ingerdients Carmy and Sydney's Chaos Menu entails.
Carmy takes the initial idea a step further by calling their new culinary plan"Chaos Menu but thoughtful" which, frankly, confuses things a bit further.
It's a given that all dishes, even the most chaotic ones, must be a little bit thoughtful, otherwise, they'll probably be disasters.
That being said, the characters who work and cook in "The Bear" restaurant, do mention some ingredients in passing.
These include cherry vinegar, frozen Concord grapes, beef consommé, and smoked bone marrow, among others.
Some of the dishes they create include:
- Fresh pasta with lamb ragu
- Sandae (with Carmy mentioning, hopefully jokingly, a plan for something called "veal stock sandae)
- Cheese-stuffed pasta in brown butter with pesto
- Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza; a must, given that the restaurant is located in Chigago!
- Focaccia, one of the meals we get to glimpse in the Season finale.
The best thing about chaos cooking is that you can try it at home. There are tons of recipes on the internet and on social media cooking accounts.
Chaos cooking is considered good for mental health because it removes some of the pressure of having to cook perfectly. As such, it's a great addition to a feel-good comedy show like The Bear.
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