One Simple Fix Could Save The Bear
Carmy looks like he could use some help. We have a suggestion.
The Bear is a good name for a TV show, but not for a restaurant. Especially not this restaurant. If there was a restaurant in contemporary Chicago in an old sandwich shop renovated to look like modern-day Copenhagen without tablecloths or a large central communal table, serving a minimalist French-Italian-Nordic tasting menu with fine-dining service and a sandwich window on the side, it would not be named The Bear, regardless of what the chef’s boyhood nickname was.
In season three of The Bear, Carmy is hyperfocused on giving his restaurant the right signifiers to earn it a Michelin star but doesn’t stop to think about the overall vision. A name — like the title of an album or a film — is a statement of purpose and the first way a restaurateur tells the diner what they’re hoping to achieve. Carmy butts heads with everyone in the kitchen and front of house over the creative direction of the food, but the real problem is the restaurant’s name fails to communicate exactly what Carmy wants The Bear to be. Well, consider us Gordon Ramsey. No, we want to be Robert Irvine — jacked but with really thin glasses. And it’s time for a Restaurant: Impossible for The Bear. Starting with the name.
Why the Name Doesn’t Work
It’s too casual.
“The Bear” sounds like a bar. It’s the “the.” In the real world, a the feels like a reference to the British pub tradition. As Alan Sytsma, food editor at New York Magazine and Grub Street, notes, the most noteworthy “the” restaurants in the U.S. are gastropubs: The Spotted Pig (clearly a British-pub hat tip) and The Redhead in New York; in Chicago, The Publican, The Dawson, The Duck Inn, and The Gage. These restaurants have great, elevated food, but it’s decidedly comfort focused (oysters, half-chickens, etc.) and the vibe is chill. The Bear’s vibe is not chill and it does not sell duck confit poutine with Guinness gravy.
It’s too formal.
The other main “the” users in American dining are restaurants trying to project a certain sort of French formality. Just as it’s common for British pubs to start with “the,” French restaurant names often begin with le, la, or les. This nomenclature was particularly prevalent among classic French restaurants of 1960s and ’70s America, like La Grenouille in New York and Le Perroquet in Chicago. Restaurants aspiring to a French level of refinement or cultural sophistication with the freedom to move beyond strictly French food shifted this format to English, and le, la, les became the in three-star Michelin restaurants like The French Laundry and The Inn at Little Washington. These are restaurants where formal dress and service are expected. You know there are going to be white tablecloths. Though a chef like Carmy might train in a place like this (and does on the show), a young chef trying to be on the vanguard would not want to open this sort of “the” restaurant. Even if the food at The Bear this season does not seem as edgy as the thoughtful chaos menu of the friends and family dinner, it is not classic French. And Richie’s service, with all its familiarity and boisterousness, is definitely not what a “the” name is suggesting.
It’s dated.
The thing about all the restaurants named above is they were opened decades ago. “The” gastropubs were cool when Barack Obama was a senator, and “the” fine-dining restaurants were cool when he was in law school. And now we have to talk about the “bear” of it all. When combined with a “the,” The Bear feels reminiscent of indie aughts band names like Grizzly Bear, Bear Hands, and Minus the Bear, and graphic T-shirts of a bear fighting a guy with a mustache. It’s hipster dressed like a lumberjack serving you a craft cocktail in a mason jar. So, very not The Bear.
What Should the New Name Be?
Clearly, the goal was a name that felt neither too highbrow nor too lowbrow, as restaurants have been trending toward an unstuffy seriousness for decades. But The Bear is unfortunately both too high and too low. There’s Berzatto, which feels in line with Carbone or Torrisi but is probably too Italian for the food Carmy wants to serve. As Grub Street Underground Gourmet columnist Tammie Teclemariam points out, Berzatto’s or any possessive name would be very, very on trend but probably too casual. Sytsma told me that Chicago tends to have a higher tolerance for pretentious restaurant names like Alinea or the show’s beloved Ever, which suggests the Latin word for Bear, ursa (a name first offered by someone on Instagram after I questioned the name The Bear in my story), could be perfect. Sytsma says it would probably be styled all lowercase, ursa, and he and Grub Street senior writer Chris Crowley agree it seems like the most likely name in real life. The problem is, though ursa wouldn’t be too pretentious for Chicago, it would be too eye-roll-y for a TV show.
Which brings us to … Bear. Drop the “the.” It’s cleaner and not too casual or stodgy; it’s confident but still chill. Of Chicago’s 21 Michelin-star restaurants, 18 are one-word names. Also, considering the city’s football team, it gives the restaurant a sense of place. Teclemariam says it feels nordic, which also works for Carmy. Not for nothing, everyone calls him “Bear” and not “the Bear.”
But allow me to suggest a further step. The thing that made Carmy’s restaurant project exciting in the first place was not that famous chef Carmy was in Chicago (Chicago has famous chefs already) but that it was happening at beloved local staple The Beef. Right now, the only thing making them any money is serving the sandwiches The Beef was originally known for. This is why I propose the entire establishment be called The Beef and the fine-dining restaurant within called Bear at The Beef. You get the minimalism of a single, one-syllable noun but also some edgy, pop-up cachet. You get Carmy’s vision paired with the name recognition of its predecessor. You get franchise opportunities with the sandwiches (more The Beefs, more money). That’s the restaurant. Print up some new T-shirts.