#also shows the different ways in which carmy and sydney view 'every second counts'

[alwaysrunningoutoftime]

"Sure, he’s under pressure but Sydney is too and yet Sydney stopped and went to Tina, she understood her distress, she felt her silent cry of help and crossed the kitchen to her, steadying Tina again, calmly, without harsh words, without being a total prick even if the situation was nerve-wracking."

"He looked at it and was mad, impressed, envious and solemn. He looked at Sydney as if she is special, as if this is special and something. Something that was worth taking a few seconds to stop, to see and take in. The few seconds he pointedly declared they did not have to Tina."

3x03

The way he looks at Syd here. I found it extremely interesting and back then I understood it a certain way but now that I have the whole context, meaning I have finished watching season 3...well I see it in a totally different light. Okay this might be a bit long one but here me out. 

At first, I thought Carmy was mad. They were in the rush of service and some plates took longer than necessary to be ready and so he was in his full-asshole Chef mode, running expo in a way that was cold and stressing. I thought he was simply angry because Sydney went to help Tina with the pasta cooking/plating. 

I still think he is mad but with the events in the following episodes, I believe it is way more than that, I think it is much deeper than I expected it to be and I might be reading into this too much but I made another meta and I feel like I cannot speak about this scene without bringing the Carmy scene at Ever in 3x10. 

Now, I think Carmy is jealous. I believe he is impressed. He is mad. He is so fucking envious. He is scared, petrified even. Carmy is in awe and quite astonished. 

That is how I see it now.

The thing is Sydney is portrayed as being impatient, and sure she might have shown some signs of being so regarding certain aspects but when it comes to cooking, when it comes to leading a team, when it comes to being the Chef of cuisine, when it is about running her kitchen, her cooks, she is patient. 

Sydney is patient and calm and pedagogue. She is willing to repeat, to assist and to help. She does not shout, she does not squeeze you even more into the panic of the kitchen even if the situation pleads her to do so. Sydney is loving, caring and fulfilling. She brings back your confidence up, she highlights your strengths, she shows that she trusts you. Sydney is willing to wait, repeat and assist you without doing it all for you even under the humongous pressure of time and peak service. She provides the tools, shows you how to use them in the most efficient way and lets you do it, her hand ready to chime in if needed, if you ask for it. Essentialy, she's a humonguous talented force that whispers you that you can do it. You can do it, Tina. You can do it, Marcus. You can do it.

We saw that during season 1. We saw that again during season 2. She is special, she is something. We saw that once more during season 3, more precisely with Tina, taking the seconds necessary to show her multiple times how to properly cook the pasta and plate it correctly even under the pressure of service. She sets aside her work and helps, guiding Tina with utmost care. She was annoyed too. She was stressed. It was in the middle of service, it delayed everything but Sydney still helped. 

And what did Carmy do in those specific instances? 

He shouted. He was cold, destroying Tina’s confidence, spitting deprecating comments. He did not help. He did not love. He did not care. Sure, he’s under pressure but Sydney is too and yet Sydney stopped and went to Tina, she understood her distress, she felt her silent cry of help and crossed the kitchen to her, steadying Tina again, calmly, without harsh words, without being a total prick even if the situation was nerve-wracking. 

Carmy saw that. He looked at that interaction, watched Sydney be a teacher, a pedagogue, he saw Sydney be the Chef he is not. The Chef he probably never will be. He gazed at something that he does not know how to do, at something he did not even think possible in a kitchen. 

He looked at it and was mad, impressed, envious and solemn. He looked at Sydney as if she is special, as if this is special and something. Something that was worth taking a few seconds to stop, to see and take in. The few seconds he pointedly declared they did not have to Tina.

That is something.

[whenmemorydies]

When the mentor is a lesson: we all deserve respect

Prior to season 3 of The Bear, I wrote Lessons from a mentor: every second counts about the parallels between Sydney and Chef Andrea Terry. While we don't spend much time with Chef Terry in The Bear, its clear that she is presented as a foil to Chef David Fields who appears throughout seasons 1-3 as one of Carmy's main abusers and an antagonist on the show.

Given Sydney's clear parallels with Fields' foil, Chef Terry, I've been thinking about contrasts made by the show between Sydney and Chef Fields and how these serve to highlight the path that Carmy should be choosing as EC of The Bear.

For me, the primary differences between Syd and Fields have to do with respect, namely who and what is worthy of it. Below are some specific contrasts made in the course of seasons 1 to 3 between the two of them in this regard:

Wasting food, time and labour

The wasting of food encouraged by Chef David Fields is seen most starkly in season 3.

Above: Chef Fields getting Carmy to bin exorbitant amounts of food he deems not perfect (screenshots from 3x01 Tomorrow).

Sydney knows that you shouldn’t waste food. In season 1, we saw her refusing to throw out her cola-braised short ribs even though Carmy’s view was that the dish wasn’t ready for service. Instead, Sydney gives her extra plate to a patron at The Beef, so that her food does not go to waste.

Above: Carmy cock-blocking Syd's dish from service and Sydney not letting it go to waste (screenshots from 1x06 Ceres). Below: Syd explaining to Carmy why her spare dish ended up with a patron.

So what does avoiding food waste have to do with respect? In giving the extra plate of her ribs to a patron, Sydney showed respect for the time and labour she invested in developing and cooking her dish. She is also showing respect for the labour and resources that went into growing its ingredients: the cow that would ultimately become the beef short rib (a single cow can take approximately 17,520 pounds of feed, 33,160 litres of water and 1-2 years to raise before its fit for slaughter), the rice that had to be sewn, grown and harvested before it turned into risotto, the aromatics like garlic, onion and carrot that make up the base of the sauce and stock, which take months to grow in the first place. I know the phrase "do you think X just grows on trees?" is meant to indicate something that is freely available, but any person who's successfully grown anything edible will tell you that it takes time, effort and work for that fruit to grow.

Below: picking cucumbers and strawberries at my in-laws' place. My father-in-law is a resolute gardener and tends to his fruit and veggie beds everyday: weeding, applying his own homemade compost, fending off pests, harvesting, irrigating... growing food is no joke!

When Fields and Carmy insist on throwing out dishes that aren’t “perfect”, they devalue all of the above. In an instant, they erase the months - in some cases years - that were given to create ingredients. They make invisible the creative energy, time and even love that went into developing the dishes in the first place. They also contribute to a work culture where the jump between devaluation of labour and time, to devaluation of workers themselves is small and ever-shrinking.

Devaluation of people

Once you start devaluing workers - the people themselves - you are well on your way to cementing a fascist work culture.

A precise definition of fascism is hard to pin down and its meaning differs slightly depending on who you speak to. Generally speaking, fascism is marked by dictatorial or autocratic control by a single leader, suppression of opposition, vehement fear and policing of difference (which makes fascist regimes almost always racist ones), and subsequent glorification of the nation over the individual (this nationalism is also almost always tied up with race). Does this all sound familiar? It should. There's a certain orange cheeto and his horde of ghouls that have recently done this fascist dance right into a second term at the White House.

But I digress. Back to The Bear.

Chef David's kitchen at Empire was a fascist one. He ran it like a dictator. He did not allow his staff to share any views on the food that differed from his own (recall him mocking Carmy for even taking the time to silently think about Fields' completely changing his paupiette of hamachi dish in 3x01 Tomorrow: "Just take your time thinking about that. Just wait longer for that to process."). He had such disregard and disdain for his staff that he did not hesitate to kick a chef out of his kitchen over a broken sauce (recall 1x02 Hands) or tell Carmy that he "should be dead" in the same episode. You can't get much more dehumanising than this shit.

Below: Chef Fields being a heinous, abusive POS (screenshot from 1x02 Hands)

Given the close relationship between fascism and racism, its no wonder that aspects of white supremacy culture also leech into Chef David's kitchen. I've written here about the role of whiteness in Carmy’s racialisation as an Italian-American man. That meta also discusses Tema Okun’s work on white supremacy culture and how it manifests in organisations and workplaces. Okun noted the below identifying characteristics of organisational, white supremacist culture, including (but not limited to):

perfectionism;

either/or & binary thinking; and

a sense of urgency.

In The Bear, these characteristics are on full display at Empire (as well as in Carmy's kitchen in The Bear during season 3). This is so much the case that Carmy has sense of urgency tattooed across his knuckles (in the form of "SOU").

In contrast, Sydney was the first to advocate for a change in how they run things at The Beef. She wanted to break from the abusive patterns she had experienced in the past working at fine dining establishments and she asserts this all the way back in 1x03 Brigade during that alley chat between her and Carmy (which is still my favourite scene between the two of them - yes even more than them screwing under that wonky table with nothing wrong with it lmao).

Unlike Fields, Sydney recognises the humanity in her coworkers. She does not devalue them. She encourages them to take their time and get things right.

Below left: Fields terrorising Carmy to "go faster motherfucker" (screenshot from 1x02 Hands). Below right: Sydney gently reassuring Tina as she adjusts to working as a sous chef "Take your time, chef" (screenshot from 3x03 Doors).

Where Chef Fields refuses to compromise on a dish, Sydney provides suggestions to help her team improve on ideas that they've come up with themselves. Recall how Fields dismisses Carmy's hamachi, zucchini and blood orange dish (before stealing it himself) in 3x01 Tomorrow. In 3x05 Children, Sydney spots Tina working on a cauliflower and brussel sprout dish and instead of berating her about the dish or her technique, she listens to Tina's thoughts about wanting to support a local grower and offers a suggestion for how she might change her plating. In short, where Chef Fields dictates, Sydney collaborates. The former refuses to recognise - to respect - the people he works with and their ideas while the latter does the opposite: she recognises her coworkers as whole human beings worthy of respect and encourages them to think independently, nurturing the ideas they bring with them to work.

Below left: Fields turning Carmys' dish three shades of beige in 3x01 Tomorrow. Below right: Sydney mentoring Tina (your honour, I love them) in 3x05 Children.

Sydney's deep care for her team is never more apparent than in her concern for Marcus, particularly after his mother's death. She takes the time after a supremely chaotic Friends and Family night to not only support Carmy but to also call Marcus and check in on him. Sydney is the only one on the team to enquire after Marcus' welfare the following morning (when everyone else was too busy asking about fucking Claire /vom) and she takes the time to help Marcus when it comes time for him to sort through his mother's belongings.

Below left: Sydney calling Marcus to let him know he has The Bear's support (screenshot from 3x01 Tomorrow). Below middle: Sydney asking the only question I actually wanted the crew to answer following Friends and Family (screenshot from 3x02 Next). Below right: Sydney and Marcus watch on as removalists take his mother's furniture out of his home (screenshot from 3x05 Children)

Contrast the above with Carmy's experience of grief while at work at Empire under Chef Fields. Fields had created such a culture of fear in his kitchen that when Carmy finds out about Mikey's death at work, it appears that he tells no one and continues cooking. He even apparently burns his hand but continues to work through it (he has no gloves on before the call from Natalie in 3x01 Tomorrow but is seen wearing a glove on one hand as he plates Sydney's favourite dish following the call).

Below left: Carmy's hands, plating hamachi with fennel soubise before he finds out Mikey has died. Below right: A grief-stricken Carmy continues to work with a gloved right hand as he deviates from Chef Field's orders and retakes his hamachi dish (screenshots from 3x01 Tomorrow).

No one should have to work under the conditions that Carmy did at Empire. They were abusive, toxic and ultimately, in Carmy's words, "made [him] very, probably mentally ill." This is fascism: where people are treated as cogs in service of the machine - replicants (as Richie likes to call them - see @freedelusionshere reblog of Chaos and Consistency for more on this) that serve no other function than churning out products for consumption: their grief, their love, their humanity be damned.

In You love taking care of people: Fine Dining in the Time of Late Stage Capitalism, I wrote about how colonialism and the wealth it generated gave colonising nation-states the time and resources to develop food cultures that they would then proclaim as the epitome of global "fine dining." Colonialism itself was (and continues to be) driven by racist dehumanisation: the devaluing of Indigenous and Global South peoples to the point that they could be used as slave labour and their resources stolen. Colonialism's dehumanisation also necessarily involved devaluation of the cultures of the colonised, including their foodways. This is another point of difference between Chef Fields and Sydney.

Devaluation of foodways

I don't think its a coincidence that the writers of this show had Chef FIelds turn Carmy's hamachi dish into literally the whitest plate I've seen on The Bear. I've noted here that originally, the plate featured the colours of the Italian flag (green, white and red) - indicative of Carmy's culinary ancestry - but that gets wiped and replaced by whiteness once Fields swoops in and steals the dish. I think this was a deliberate choice by the writers to indicate Fields' allegiance to the old guard of fine dining - where the food cultures of white Europeans are valorised above all else (and before you say anything, yes Italians are racialised as white but that hasn't always been the case - see my meta here on this).

The show then makes purposeful distinctions between Fields' preferences and views as compared to Sydney's when it comes to food. Some notable examples are below:

Chef Fields hates black pepper - the spice that Christopher Columbus was trying to find in India and which ended up sending him to the Americas instead. Sydney loves pepper. It features in her cola-braised short ribs as well as in a recipe she was workshopping during 1x08 Braciole.

Above left: Sydney's recipe for cola-braised short ribs includes 1tsp of black pepper. (screenshot from 1x08 Braciole). Above middle: Carmen on Fields’ hatred of the most commonly traded spice in the world: “He hates black pepper for some reason I'll never understand.” (Screenshot from 3x10 Forever). Above right: Sydney's notebook as she workshops a recipe at home in 1x08 Braciole: “more…pepper?”

We also see Fields berating Carmy for the number of components he has in an early version of the hamachi dish in 3x01 Tomorrow. He dismissively compares the dish to nachos. This bullshit rubbed me so furiously the wrong way because of its racism and classism. Nachos were created in the 1940s in northern Mexico, near the border and are now ubiquitous in America as an affordable and much loved snack. The original dish featured fried corn tortilla chips, Colby cheese and pickled jalapenos - a mix of ingredients that have their origins in Indigenous food cultures, as well as Mexico and the United States, reflecting the nature of cultural exchange at the border (there is also the fact that that border was imposed on communities that were already established in the region. i.e. they didn't cross the border, the border crossed them). The original nacho dish also uses ingredients that were economically affordable. This remains the case today.

So when Fields compares Carmy's dish to nachos, what he's implying is that the food is "common" and not elevated or refined enough to be served by Empire. This sentiment has its roots in a history of racism and classism. In Colonization, Food and the Practice of Eating, Dr Linda Alvarez notes that when the Spanish colonised the Americas, they considered Indigenous foods - like tortillas - "famine food" - to only be consumed if European food was not available to eat.

Above: Chef David Fields being a racist and classist sack of shit (screenshot from 3x01 Tomorrow).

In stark contrast to Fields' bullshit is Sydney who loves and respects food, period: whether its being served at Empire or Michael Jordan's Steakhouse. Recall her chat with Marcus in 1x08 Braciole and her wish to open a spot that would make the second-best bacon on Earth (because, well, how could she unseat Jordan? lol).

Below: Sydney and Marcus chatting about her dream spot (screenshots from 1x08 Braciole)

So, in conclusion:

Chef Fields is a fascist, regarded with no love by anyone (as far as we've been shown on The Bear anyway). Sydney is not a fascist. She gives grace and respect wherever she can. She honours people in their wholeness. So be like Sydney and resist fascism: in your homes, in your workplaces and in your government. Now, more than ever.