Carmen Anthony Berzatto, typically called Carmy, Carm, Bear, Chef, or Jeff, is a fictional character on the FX Network television series The Bear. Created by Christopher Storer and played by Jeremy Allen White since the show's premiere in 2022, Carmy is a nationally acclaimed chef who returns home to Chicago to run his family's failing Italian beef sandwich restaurant after the death of his older brother. White has received multiple Emmy and Golden Globe awards for his portrayal of the sometimes-troubled cook, who attempts to salvage the family business while simultaneously reconstructing long-neglected family relationships with his sister and their "cousin," all with help from a talented young chef who joins the restaurant crew in the pilot episode.
Carmy is a talented young chef who inherits a shithole sandwich shop in the River North neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States, from his recently deceased drug-dependent brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) and sets to work turning it into a respectable place of business.[1] Carmy has been described as a prototypical prodigal son.[2] As such, Allen has stated that Carmy initially comes home without "much of an identity outside of his profession."[3] Carmy is known as one of the great chefs of his age: "ambitious and creative, and...so gifted that nearly everyone who's ever eaten his food thinks it's among the best they've ever had"[4]—such that "people are willing to forgive his flaws just to be in his presence, to absorb his knowledge."[1] Trained at the French Laundry in California's Napa Valley, Noma in Copenhagen, Restaurant Daniel in New York, and by the fictional Michelin-starred Andrea Terry (Olivia Colman) at a fictionalized version of Chicago's own Ever, Carmy Berzatto is a past winner of Food & Wine's Best New Chef in very early adulthood, and a James Beard Award for his work at a restaurant in California.[5][6] He has served as the chef de cuisine at the best restaurants in the country.[6] He retained three stars at Michelin-awarded restaurants but has never been awarded a star in his own right. A satiric metacommentary review of the Bear restaurant in Chicago magazine nonetheless predicted that Carmy "is in the express lane, headed straight for his first Michelin star."[7] He is a "resourceful businessman," albeit somewhat challenged by what appears to be dyscalculia; basic arithmetic, if not simple counting, eludes him entirely.[8][9][10]
In addition to cooking and running the business, Carmy navigates relationships with his sister Natalie Berzatto Katinsky, whom he calls Sugar (Abby Elliott), his dead brother's best friend Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), new hire sous chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), and the existing staff of the Beef, described as a "ragtag team of initially recalcitrant veteran cooks."[11][12] Richie and Carmy call each other cousin even though they are not biologically related. Richie was a long-time manager of the Beef alongside Mikey; he initially resented that the restaurant had been bequeathed to the long-absent Carmy instead of to him. The staff of the Beef were all but raw recruits when Carmy arrived at the restaurant, but in direct contravention of the often-toxic chefs who trained them, Carmy and his partner Chef Sydney both recognize and cultivate "strength in the crew that [they] have, rather than focusing on their weaknesses."[13] Richie leads the vanguard of the kitchen's opposition to Carmy's succession to his brother's greasy-spoon throne; he declares that Carmy's years of nearly militaristic discipline and grueling labor have made him "pretentious, delusional, and a fucking sissy."[14] By season two, as Carmy invests heavily in staff development, the ways he nurtures, challenges, and impedes the various members of his "found family" are a major element of his character arc.[15] Despite his character flaws, the terminally self-loathing Carmy is ultimately animated by love for his family, and thus, he (with partners Sydney, Richard, and Natalie) is largely successful in his attempts to create a hospitable environment at the Bear: "The people within its walls did not necessarily choose to come together, nor do they necessarily leave their baggage at the door. But they are never alone, and together they create an atmosphere of precision, pleasure, and unity that is difficult to replicate elsewhere or under different circumstances."[10] Carmy reaps more than a few benefits of this himself, as "people heal in community and through the relationships they've built."[8]
Despite his "fundamental decency," Carmy's insecurity and intermittent temper tantrums result in isolation for him and distress for his family and coworkers.[1] Some of Carmy's travails can be traced his dysfunctional upbringing as the neglected youngest child of an absent father and an alcoholic mother, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), leaving him prone to workaholism, panic attacks, and dissociation.[8][16] Plagued with perfectionism, and unresolved grief over the suicide of his idolized, charismatic, mentally ill older brother, Carmy compartmentalizes his feelings in favor of the grinding labor of the kitchen and periodically sabotages his own happiness in order to minimize his potential exposure to any emotion.[17] Some observers have asserted that Carmy exhibits symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD).[18][19] He had a pronounced stutter in childhood; verbal disfluency re-emerges in the adult Carmy when he is exposed to people or situations that remind him of the neglect and abuse of his youth.[20] Naming and articulating his feelings, and speaking up for himself in the face of emotional manipulation, remain enduring challenges for Carmy; he "stutters and staggers" through interpersonal relationships, falling back on "I'm trying" when he fails to reveal himself or connect with his nearest and dearest.[8] Behaviors exhibited throughout the series and personal characteristics he mentions in a seven-minute monologue at an Al-Anon meeting in season one (including difficulties paying attention, difficulties in school, and difficulties making friends) suggest to some viewers that Carmy should be categorized as a neurodivergent person.[21][19] He exacerbates his existing social struggles with a habit of viewing professional colleagues as competitors and threats to be defeated.[15] His work in "extremely high pressure" kitchens under "cruel bosses" likely contributed to a belief that "a single mistake will result in humiliation, punishment, and being judged as unable to meet the demands of the job."[22] Under stress, he reverts to exhibiting the angry, intolerant behaviors that were modeled for him in childhood and at his worst jobs, to his regret and shame. For its part, the show demonstrates clearly that the mad genius is entirely dispensable if other members of the crew have been fully trained and amply empowered.[23]
Mr. Beef in Chicago partially inspired the fictional Original Beef of Chicagoland restaurant depicted on The Bear
Los Angeles Times television critic Robert Lloyd described Carmy as an "ailing but admirable" young man who is built around a "core of sadness" but "happily free of the negative characteristics we have come to associate with fictional (and some notorious nonfictional) chefs: arrogance, unkindness, substance abuse, sexual predation...He is secure in what he knows and honest with his employees, who do not always appreciate it."[24] Carmy aspires to be kind, calm, and equitable, but does not reliably achieve this, periodically descending to "maniac" "menace" "psychopath" behavior that cannot readily be curbed, even by those closest to him.[10] For instance, early on he consistently defends overqualified new hire Sydney from sexual harassment by Richie, but declines to intervene when the rest of the staff haze and sabotage her. When he breaks down and turns on her in a moment of crisis, he recognizes the consequences of his misconduct too late to preserve their fragile relationship but ultimately texts her an apology that "my behavior was not okay."[14] A consistent and deeply sincere apologizer, by season four, his transgressions against those closest to him have become too consistent for his apologies to hold much weight; Richie yells "your sorries mean shit."[1]
Carmy and his de facto foster brother, Richie, are prone to "emotional suppression and self-destruction...shouting matches and belittl[ing] one another," habits of toxic masculinity and patriarchy learned at home and at work.[25] These behaviors hobble them individually and the functioning of the business generally, but they simultaneously encourage and enable the careers of their female business partners: their shared sibling and the Bear's business manager, Nat, as well as young chef Syd, who worships Carmy's food and initially adores him by extension, and who is ultimately perceived to be as talented as Carmy himself.[25] Sydney has been described as Carmy's "most valued colleague."[1] Syd, who is "an ambitious black girl who trained at the Culinary Institute of America,"[2] has elsewhere been described by the show's producers as Carm's "work wife."[26] (Carmy had a brief romantic relationship in season two with emergency room physician Claire Dunlap, played by Molly Gordon; the two first met as teenagers and still have overlapping social circles.)[27] Media scholars have commented that Carmy's relationship with his diverse crew is likely central to character's healing journey and redemption arc: "If, in future seasons of the show, Carmy succeeds in the new venture, there is a risk of uncritically replicating the myth of the self-made man if these rewards are not justly shared with the women and people of color who make up most of the staff of the Bear."[28]
Allen's portrayal of Chef Berzatto has been described as "a realistic casting of that asshole" common to high-intensity kitchens, although "The Bear suggests that Carmy's going to be a different kind of leader, one who's learned from his own experience and wants to change the narrative instead of perpetuating it."[29] Carm has been further described as a textbook exemplar of "'an exclusive strain of Sexually Competent Dirtbag™ that only exists in a restaurant kitchen'...'This man does not have curtains in his apartment but he has a $1400 knife that is only for cutting fish.'" Carmy's home and restaurant-office decor indeed consists primarily of scores of cookbooks from multiple eras and regions of the world.[30]
In childhood, the three Berzatto siblings were known by nicknames suffixed with -bear: Mikeybear, Sugarbear, and Babybear.[31] In adulthood Carmy is still called Bear by his sister, others who knew him in his youth, and the restaurant's pastry chef, Marcus Brooks (Lionel Boyce).[31] One of the cooks at the Beef, Tina Marrero (Liza Colón-Zayas), begins calling him Jeff as a corruption of the more respectful title chef; Jeff and extensions such as Jeffrey eventually come to be used as endearments, when Tina transfers her abiding affection for the late Mikey to his younger brother Carmy.[32]
The Berzattos are Italian American by heritage; media critics have found that the show traffics in stereotypes of Italian Americans being primarily consumed with gangsterism, "food and sex," but that Carmy's "pervasive/invasive relationship with family emerges as the theme of the series."[2] Unlike his older brother Mikey, Carmy himself has "no stereotypically Italian American features—[he is] blond, blue-eyed, with a constant astonished expression on his face, his attractiveness deriving from boyish appearance, barely counterbalanced by numerous tattoos and tight muscles," attributes that suggest his placement within a "perpetual imbalance between the natural assimilation of 'other' cultures" and the pull toward signifiers of Italian-American identity.[33] Carmy's default plain white T-shirt suggests to some that the show styles him as a "James Dean of the kitchen pass."[34]
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