"Sundae" is the third episode of the second season of the American television comedy-dramaThe Bear. It is the 11th overall episode of the series and was written by Karen Joseph Adcock and Catherine Schetina, and directed by executive producer Joanna Calo. It was released on Hulu on June 22, 2023, along with the rest of the season.
The series follows Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto, an award-winning New York City chef de cuisine, who returns to his hometown of Chicago to run his late brother Michael's failing Italian beef sandwich shop. In the episode, Sydney visits different restaurants to try dishes, while Carmy starts spending time with Claire.
The episode received critical acclaim, with Ayo Edebiri receiving praise for her performance.
Plot
At an Al-Anon meeting, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) opens up about his plans for the restaurant. He is not intent on finding time for fun or amusement, as he has been feeling stressed out. Later, he is called by Claire (Molly Gordon), who got his real number from Fak. She asks for help in moving her mother's stuff, and Carmy actually accepts.
As they need to get out of their routine and sample food at other restaurants for their menu, Carmy and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) make plans to visit restaurants across the city. However, Carmy is unable to accompany Sydney due to helping Claire, so Sydney is forced to do the trip by herself. She also exchanges some conversations with some of her colleagues in the restaurants, with one remarking that she needs a partner to work with. While exhausted, she eventually comes up with a pasta dish from all the different dishes she tried during the day.
She returns to The Bear, finding Carmy already there. She discovers that Carmy and the staff have removed a wall due to space concerns, upsetting Sydney as she was not involved in the decision. With a colleague's help, Sydney cooks the pasta dish at a restaurant, but she is disgusted by its taste.
Context
Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson) are at culinary school at Kendall College.[1] One restaurateur wrote in GQ magazine that this was "maybe the most insane part of the season. The Bear sends Ebraheim and Tina to culinary school and continues to pay them hourly to do it....[The school] charges about $8,400 for tuition, and you can get a certificate within a year. Tina seemingly spends two and half months, and Ebraheim drops out. So it's hard to gauge but you can imagine a bill well upwards of $20,000."[2]
To celebrate Tiff's promotion, Frank got "the good cake" from Weber's. Weber's Bakery, opened in Garfield Ridge in 1930, is a Chicago institution "famous for its range of cakes, tortes, and donuts."[3]
Carmy proposes a "palate reset" at Kasama, which is a Michelin-starred Chicago restaurant that specializes in Filipino cuisine.[4] The word kasama means "together with" in Tagalog.[5] Kasama functions as a bakery in the daytime and a fancy dinner place (like the Bear) at night. [1] Syd ended up dining alone; she ordered mushroom adobo, the breakfast sandwich with longanisa, a crispy hash brown, a matchalatte, and a mango tart made of "fresh mango carved delicately before being placed in a pastry shell".[6][7] The married-couple chefs behind Kasama, Tim Flores and Genie Kwon, designed the Bear's "seven fishes" dish that premiered at restaurant's Friends & Family night: "We used one prawn and mussels and this beautiful fumé with saffron."[8] Genie Kwon later appeared as herself in the season three finale, "Forever."[4]
Sydney's Coach K book, Leading With the Heart, first appears in this episode, and her server at Kasama summarizes the content: "Courage and confidence lead to decision making."[9] Over the course of the season, Syd "becomes increasingly engrossed ...despite not really knowing who Coach K is."[10] Coach K grew up in Chicago and has fond memories of Chicago's Polish Broadway, the area "near Wicker Park that was once a hub for Polish restaurants and businesses."[11] Coach Krzyzewski's dad was in the restaurant business; he ran a breakfast spot for factory workers in Little Village, and later a bar called Cross' Tavern in the Lower West Side neighborhood.[11] In 2024, Krzyzewski told Eater Chicago that he still eats a kind of Polish sausage called krakowska and that he resonates with The Bear because "The passion and the intensity that's shown up in that show is remarkable and that's why they've won so many awards. They're seeking excellence, and they know in order to seek excellence you need everybody on the team seeking it and working as one. There's a lot of pressure in those kitchens."[11] Coach Krzyzewski had never seen the show and did not know his book and career were going to be featured on The Bear season two until after it was released, when he started getting texts from friends.[10]
Syd also visits Avec, where her character had once worked, and talks to restaurateur Donnie Madia, as well as Pizza Lobo, Lao Peng You in Ukrainian Village, and Giant in Logan Square, standing in for the fictional Verdana, where Syd's friend Naiya (CG) worked as a chef.[1] At Pizza Lobo she ordered the "thin-crust Roni Pizza featuring small pepperonis cooked to a crisp."[12] Chef de cuisine Rob Levitt of Publican Quality Meats in Fulton Market advised Sydney on butchery, using "personal experience for his dialogue."[4][13] She ends her tasting tour with a banana split at Margie's Candies in Bucktown, an ice cream parlor owned by the same family since 1933, famous for giant sundaes served in clamshell dishes.[4][3]
The kitchen Syd borrows for her unsuccessful attempted pasta dish is the Michelin-starred Elske, where she is greeted by David Posey.[1] His wife, pastry chef Anna Posey, appeared as herself in the Ever funeral episode in season four.[4]
Production
Development
In May 2023, Hulu confirmed that the third episode of the season would be titled "Sundae", and was to be written by Karen Joseph Adcock and Catherine Schetina, and directed by executive producer Joanna Calo.[14] It was Adcock's second writing credit, Schetina's second writing credit, and Calo's fourth directing credit.[15]
Casting
CG, who played Syd's friend Chef Naiya, is a New Orleans native who played Shar on the 2022 Peacock version of Queer as Folk.[16] Her character's restaurant, Verdana, closes by the end of the season, right before the Bear opens.[16]
Costuming
At the Al-Anon meeting, Carmy is wearing Nike Cortez shoes (which also happen to be Jeremy Allen White's preferred brand and style of sneakers).[17][18] When working with Sydney in the kitchen at his apartment, Carmy is wearing a gray cashmerecable-knit sweater made by J. Crew.[19][20]
Sydney wears a 1991 NBA FinalsChicago Bulls championship tee under her puffer jacket.[21] Her jacket while she tours Chicago alone is the Paloma Wool Hokusai in green, paired with a pillow headscarf.[22] According to costume designer Courtney Storer, "That black puffer head scarf...was Ayo's. That was her idea. At one point she actually lost it. She had got it from Etsy. We did have to have our wonderful tailor Austin fake one for a scene until we could get it ordered from an Etsy seller in Uzbekistan."[23]
When Sydney checks in at the under-construction restaurant that night, Carmy has changed into a Merz b. Schwanen T-shirt (made with "loopwheel cotton construction—the old school way") and Carhartt pants.[19]
Filming
Director and show runner Calo said the episode was "originally conceived as 'Sydney's Day Out.' You go to the market, taste the spaces, buy things, eat things. It was interesting to us, that this is commonplace for chefs."[24] The location shoots at the various Chicago restaurants took place over three days.[24] Calo said later, "[Ayo Edebiri] ate a lot of really good food. Luckily, it was really delicious! But it was way too much food."[24] Calo wanted to depict the way Sydney "engages all of her senses on a quest to build the flavors and story" of the Bear restaurant through the food.[25] Calo told NJ.com, "We started talking about it as almost like a Sesame Street episode...how to build a building, or how to make a crayon, those kinds of random childhood inspirations...We were very lucky in that we had some very talented editors who I think pulled it off for us."[25]
As narrated by Salon.com writer Grace Pau, "Calo even outfits Sydney in a 1991 Chicago Bulls World Championship shirt right before she heads to Kasama, as if noting that she, like Coach K, will lead the team to victory. As she imagines The Bear's chaos menu, she's eating and traveling around the city, looking at buildings and their design for inspiration. Architectural blueprints, close-ups of Chicago's brutalist and gothic buildings, colorful produce stands and assortments of raviolis flash in quick succession, revealing the sources of her creativity. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a slideshow of her childhood photos: images of baby Sydney eating, celebrating early birthdays and being with her mom. Sure, the creativity within Chicago inspires her, but more crucially, she herself does, too. Already, Sydney's found the confidence of Coach K."[26]
Cinematography
Jason Sterman and Brian McGinn, who usually work on Chef's Table, assisted with the on-location production, and McGinn shot kitchen B-roll for later use by the editors.[24]
The failed-experiment dish at Carmy's apartment included a "saffron sauce" with radicchio.[29] Another account described the dish as marinated radicchio with burnt grapefruit and pistachio.[30] At the end of the episode, without Carmy's help, Sydney tries building a cheese-stuffed pasta in brown butter with pesto but the dish does not seem to work.[30]
"Sundae" received critical acclaim. Marah Eakin of Vulture gave the episode a perfect 5 star out of 5 rating and wrote, "Has any fictional show made its city's food scene look better than The Bear's? Granted, that's not hard with Chicago, which has not just some of the best fine dining in the whole country but also some of the best street staples, counter classics, and everyday fare. That's made pretty clear in 'Sundae,' which is not just a great episode of TV but also a showcase for some of the city's most down-home and delicious eateries."[31]
A.J. Daulerio of Decider wrote, "She's about to plate her food, swirling the green splatter she daydreamed about earlier. She takes a bite. BLECH. She's facing a real dilemma and wonders if she's destined for a life of flagging down airplanes."[32] Arnav Srivastava of The Review Geek gave the episode a 4 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "The world from Sydney's eyes seems so different. Episode 3 of The Bear's new season experiments with storytelling with a fresh twist."[33] Karl R De Mesa from Show Snob wrote, "this is absolutely a great episode for the character development of Sydney, letting the viewer get to know her in different situations and lights, especially the way she needs to control events that usually spiral out of control. It's a big fear response and she defaults to it unconsciously."[34]
Rafa Boladeras of MovieWeb named the episode as the fifth best of the season, writing "This is a great Ayo Edeberi episode; one that tries to illustrate how creativity works, while also planting a seed of distrust between her and Carmy, as most of those incredible cooks she visits warn her about what some bad partners can do to your career and restaurant."[35] Jasmine Blu of TV Fanatic named the episode as the fifth best of the season, writing "It was one of Ayo Edebiri's strongest installments and gave us more insight into Sydney and how others in the culinary world perceive her outside of that of The Bear through this mouthwatering food tour throughout Chicago."[36]
Salon.com commented that a storyline where the female lead of a TV show eats her way around Chicago was an important blow against diet culture.[26] Moreover, per columnist Grace Pau, "The soundtrack indicates that this is not a case of stress or comfort eating, but an act of joy. First, exuberant electronic music, 'Secret Teardrop' by Martin Rev, plays right before she eats, followed by the jaunty track, '25 Miles' by Edwin Starr, as she embarks on her food tour of the city. Then, she dreams of dishes to the buoyant and ambient song, 'Future Perfect' by Durutti Column and chows down to the energetic tune of 'To Make You Happy' by Tommy McGee."[26]
TVLine named Ayo Edebiri as the "Performer of the Week" for the week of June 24, 2023, for her performance in the episode. The site wrote, "On Hulu's kitchen dramedy, Edebiri's sous chef Sydney typically serves as a loyal lieutenant to head chef Carmy. But Season 2 took the time to delve deep into the show's rich supporting cast, and Edebiri got a sumptuously shot showcase of her own in Episode 3 as Sydney wandered the streets of Chicago searching for culinary inspiration."[39]
Retrospective reviews
Also in 2024, The Hollywood Reporter placed "Sundae" at 9 on a ranked list of 28 episodes produced to that point, naming it as the first in "the 'Yes Chef Series.' These episodes not only showcase the series's love for food with mouth-watering expertise, they also dive deep into the show's beating heart: the cast."[40] ScreenRant ranked "Sundae" 23rd out of the 28 episodes produced through the end of season three, describing it as "divisive" because of mixed audience reaction to the post-season-one shift in pacing, and the sidetracking of protagonist Carmy into the Claire romance, but commending the character spotlight on Ayo Edebiri's Sydney.[41]
In 2025, Vulture ranked "System" as 7th-best out of 38 episodes of The Bear, describing it as a singular treat.[42]
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