"Brigade" is the third episode of the first season of the American comedy-drama television series The Bear. It is the third overall episode of the series and was written by series creator Christopher Storer and directed by Joanna Calo. It was released on Hulu on June 23, 2022, along with the rest of the season.
Carmy attends an Al-Anon meeting in an attempt to better understand his brother's struggles with addiction. At the restaurant, he introduces a brigade de cuisine-style kitchen and relies on the ill-prepared and increasingly frustrated Sydney to manage it. After initial failures, the staff begins to connect to their new roles—particularly Marcus, the passionate baker. Sydney confronts Carmy about being missing most of the day after not listening to her reservations about the new hierarchy. Carmy agrees that they need to collaborate and listen to each other if the business is going to succeed.
Context
Sydney tells Sweeps and other staffers clean out the "lowboys," which is what restaurant workers call low refrigerators that fit underneath countertops.[1]
The title of the episode refers to the kitchen brigade system, developed by the 19th-century Frenchman Auguste Escoffier, who documented and codified many traditional kitchen practices, including what are now called the French mother sauces, and applied the "structure and duties of a military brigade into the kitchen, assigning over 20 specific cook positions throughout the kitchen."[2] War vet Ebra connected the dots between a military brigade and the restaurant form when he commented, "I was in a brigade once. Many people died."[3]
Molly Ringwald was cast as a speaker in Carmy's Al-Anon group who reflected on addict-adjacent toxic relationships.[5]
Costuming
The aprons that Carmy hands out to the staff to visually unify the crew are the Travail style of bib apron from a French brand called Bragard.[6] The season one aprons were surplus purchased from the French Laundry restaurant in Napa after they were rejected for being the incorrect shade of blue.[7]
Syd wears a trout-themed headscarf made by Mountain Trail Outfitters.[8]
Set decoration and props
In 2024 the New York Times surmised that the spoon Carmy brandished while meeting with the staff in "Brigade" is a Gary Kunz sauce spoon, which is "a workhorse of restaurant kitchens" and "beloved by professional chefs".[9]
Sydney preps carrots and chops onions using a Kuhn Rikon peeler and a Mac Mighty MTH-80 chef's knife.[10]
Carmy describes an involved dessert that required "plum syrup, consommé, compressed fresh plums, and a plum geleé" prepared to match the consistency of Haribo gummy bears.[16]
Family meal is Ebra's chicken suqaar[so], a seasoned meat and vegetable dish popular in Somalia and Somalian-American communities.[17][18] One food writer commented that "it makes perfect sense why this would be the dish Ebrahim throws together given what he has access to in the Beef's kitchen...[suqaar] basically requires chopping everything into small pieces and cooking it together" like a Somali stir-fry.[16]
Critical reviews
BuzzFeed recognized Ringwald's brief appearance as "too good to overlook."[19]
Carmy's dictate to Sydney sets the pair further apart from the rest of the crew and contributes to building anxiety that underlies season one: "When Carmy appoints Sydney as sous-chef and instructs her to implement a French-brigade hierarchy they’re both familiar with, the existing squad of employees struggle to adjust to the new environment. Tensions run high as the original staff must start taking orders from a young girl they've known for a week."[20] Another BuzzFeed writer named Sydney and Carmy's conversation behind the restaurant as one of the key moments in the development of Syd and Carmy's relationship over the first three seasons of the show.[21]
Retrospective reviews
In 2024, The Hollywood Reporter placed "Brigade" at 22 on a ranked list of 28 episodes produced to that point, highlighting the changes to the restaurant that lead to "Carm and Syd's first major fight, swiftly followed by their first makeup, followed just as swiftly by the memorable (and accurate) line: 'Fuck brunch'."[22] ScreenRant ranked "Brigade" 27th out of the 28 episodes produced through the end of season three, in part because Syd's solitary battles with the crew make it "a draining watch...The episode goes a long way in showing how chaotic things get in the restaurant...but it struggles to match up with the rest of the series."[23]
In 2025, Vulture ranked "Brigade" as 16th-best out of 38 episodes of The Bear, describing it as a "formative" piece of season one.[24]
↑Halpern, Ashlea (June–July 2019). "The Twin Cities: where you can take a world food tour without leaving Minnesota". Bon Appétit. Vol.64, no.5. pp.43–46.
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