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. The episode introduces the characters, as well as Carmy's internal conflict in trying to keep the shop afloat.
The premiere received highly positive reviews from critics, who praised its cast and production values. It won two Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.
Plot
After having a dream where he releases a caged bear in the streets, Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto goes to his job at The Original Beef of Chicagoland sandwich shop, which belonged to his brother Michael until his recent death. Having returned to his hometown of Chicago, Carmy finds it difficult to run the place, particularly over receiving shipment and due payments.
Carmy operates the shop with Michael's best friend, manager Richard "Richie" Jerimovich; baker Marcus Brooks; cooks Tina Marrero and Ebraheim; and handyman Neil Fak. He interviews a new applicant, chef Sydney Adamu. She has experience, having trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and admires Carmy's career achievements, which includes the James Beard Foundation Award, and wants the job as The Beef is her father's favorite restaurant. Carmy hires her, although he does not disclose why he is working at the Beef.
As Carmy tries to control the environment, the stubborn staff resist Carmy's efforts to modernize the restaurant. While having lunch, Carmy goes outside to control a crowd that gathered to play for an arcade game in the shop. When the scene soon escalates, Richie goes outside and fires a gun in the air to control the crowd. After getting back to the shop, Richie reminds Carmy that he has no idea how the shop works and that he must adhere to their standards instead. As he tries to open a can of tomatoes for spaghetti, Carmy begins to feel uneasy and instead drops it in the trash.
Context
White and tattoo artist Benny Shields worked together to design Carmy's tattoos; the 773 tattoo is for Chicago's area code 773.[1]
One of the vintage clothing pieces that Carmy trades with Chi-Chi (Christopher J. Zucchero) for beef is "a coveted 1955 Levi's Type III trucker jacket."[2] The dialogue between the two also references Levi's "short-lived" Big E selvedge denim style.[3]
There is a large Mälort billboard visible above the restaurant when Carmy is trading denim for beef. Jeppson's Malört is a Chicago native liqueur that, in the words of Food & Wine magazine "occupies the rare air of popular city-specific beverages that both connote pride and are widely perceived as being bad."[4]
A neon sign advertising Vienna Beef hot dogs hangs in the window of the Original Beef restaurant. This homegrown Chicago brand is well over a century old and "practically every Chicago neighborhood has at least one Vienna hot dog stand, and if you enter sports stadiums in Chicago and others around the country, there's a good chance you'll see Vienna hot dogs for sale."[5]
Sydney identifies Carmy as the "best CDC at the best restaurant in the whole United States of America," meaning chef de cuisine at a restaurant that is implied to be Eleven Madison Park in New York (in later episodes, identified as a fictional restaurant named Empire, perhaps as a nod to "EMP" crossed with the Empire State). As a BuzzFeed writer put it, given their impressive culinary experience "both seem equally confused about crossing paths at a local sandwich shop."[9] Carmy ran high-end restaurants, and Sydney is classically trained chef, but the Beef is not about that, rather "it is for the everyman on their lunch break. It is also a cornerstone of the community, more frequented by serious regulars than by first timers. It doesn't produce the absolute best food, but it produces delicious food. When Carmy takes over, his focus is on saving it, and he can't help but make it tastier. Mikey's crew is resistant for much of the first season, but the proof is in the pudding."[10]
When Sydney asks Carmy if he wants a cartouche, that is "a piece of parchment paper that you cut into a circle and put over a soup to trap the steam."[11] Cookbooks visible in "System" include the Noma Cookbook, which Richie slams down as representative of Carmy being a "pretentious gayrod," and Mastering the Art of French Cooking and The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers.[8]
Carmy refuses to sell to Jimmy in part because he will "flip it into an Applebee's," which is a major casual sit-down dinner chain of restaurants.[12]
Production
Development
In May 2022, Hulu confirmed that the first episode of the season would be titled "System", and was to be written by series creator Christopher Storer, marking his first writing and directing credit for the series.[13][14]
Filming
Much of the pilot episode was filmed on location at Mr. Beef, a real family-owned Italian beef sandwich shop in Chicago.[15] According to Chris Zucchero, son of the original owner, Joseph Zucchero (who started the place in 1979), the "pilot was shot entirely at Mr. Beef as far as the dining room, but the back of the house stuff was all shot in a separate kitchen. Then, when the show got picked up, they built Mr. Beef on a set at the Cinespace in the south end. They did it to a T, down to the stains on the wall. It was sort of a symbiotic thing they were doing, going to the set and then coming to Mr. Beef. It was amazing to see. And they still filmed the second season at Mr. Beef too, outside and in the front."[15]
The cinematographer for the pilot was Adam Newport-Berra.[16] Due to a combination of factors, including the configuration of the building's lights and the reflective stainless steel fixtures, there was very limited RF bandwidth available for use by the production sound team on the pilot shoot.[17] They made do with wireless microphones, and one experienced boom operator, and any deficiencies in the recorded sound were patched over by dialogue editor Evan Benjamin and re-recording mixer Steve "Major" Giammaria.[17]
Costuming
The costume designer for the pilot was Cristina Spiridakis.[18] Carmy keeps his collection of "mid-centuryselvedgeLevi's" in his unused home oven.[18] Sydney enters the restaurant wearing a Musa scarf rolled up for use as a headband, and what costume designer Courtney Wheeler described as "this beautiful Thom Browne embroidered shirt from Dover Street Market."[19]
Music
The episode included songs, such as "Via Chicago" by Wilco, and "Animal" by Pearl Jam. Storer explained the decision to have the episode end with "Animal" during the credits, "We were making a statement that this is a loud show, and you are either in or out. I think it's very much not your thing, or it is very much your thing. I don't think there is too much of a middle ground. Ending the first episode with 'Animal' added this punctuation mark."[20]
Release
The episode, along with the rest of the season, premiered on June 23, 2022.[21]
Italian beef sandwiches were first popularized in Chicago in the 1920s and marketed more widely beginning in the 1940s. A typical sandwich is seasoned, roasted, shaved beef served on a French roll, and topped with a mix of chopped pickled vegetables (called giardiniera) and/or peppers, and often with some jus (gravy) added back on.[22]
Food: Sydney's family meal
Carmy's first assignment to stagiere Sydney is "We—you're gonna make family," referring to "family meal," or "staff meal," for the restaurant employees. Sydney rummages through the walk-in refrigerator and finds some ingredients that she recognizes would not immediately be needed for prep at an Italian beef sandwich shop, namely bananas or plantains, which Carmy says going to use for a "play on a panettone" (a traditional Italian cake) before he got distracted by Richie. According to one food writer, Sydney turns what she finds into "plantain stew with rice plus some fennel salad. Not the most broadly appealing dish, in my personal opinion."[23] Both bananas and fennel have been traditionally deemed aphrodisiac foods. In parts of Asia the banana was traditionally considered a symbol of male fertility,[24] while in the ancient Greco-Roman world, fennel was believed to have a feminizing influence on men but was associated with increased sexual desire in women (presumably due to the presence of phytoestrogens in this vegetable).[25]
Critical reviews
"System" received highly positive reviews from critics. Marah Eakin of Vulture gave the episode a 4 star out of 5 rating and wrote, "Episode one, “System,” is really just about establishing the vibe and drama of The Bear, and it does a good job. You leave its tight 27 minutes with more questions than you entered with, and you want to stick around to find out the answers."[26]
Mia Sidoti of MovieWeb named the episode as the sixth best of the season, writing "The pilot of The Bear doesn't have time for introductions and throws you right into the chaos of it all as Carmy tries to win over his crew and also make some extra money since they're broke. You find yourself fighting to remember exactly who is who in the first 20 minutes, wrinkling your nose at how brash Richie is, and feeling bad for Sydney as she gets mixed into the mess that is The Beef."[27]
In 2024, Josh Wigler of The Hollywood Reporter named the episode as the 15th best of the series, writing "While the show improves as it goes along, all the essential ingredients for The Bear are right there from the beginning. It's incredibly satisfying to rewatch the series from the jump, knowing all the growth ahead."[32] ScreenRant ranked "System" 21st out of the 28 episodes produced through the end of season three.[33]
In 2024, Variety listed "System" at number seven on a list of top 10 episodes of The Bear for the humor and for immediately "establishing Marcus' self-doubt and curiosity; Tina's stubbornness and pride in her work; Natalie's moral clarity and denial; Richie's sympathetic but overbearing need to be heard; Sydney's creativity and impatience; Carmy's wisdom and rage."[34]
Variety named the episode as the seventh best of the series, writing "Both The Beef and The Bear itself are, as Richie says later in the season, "a delicate fucking ecosystem," and "System" prepares for that perfectly."[35]
In 2025, Vulture ranked "System" as 8th-best out of 38 episodes of The Bear.[36]
A BuzzFeed writer who watched season one for the first time in 2025 wrote, "That was a really compelling...pilot. I guess one more episode wouldn't hurt."[37]
↑ Nordyke, Kimberly (January 15, 2024). "Emmy Awards: Winners List". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on January 15, 2024. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
Kindelsperger, Nick (2020-07-29). "20 Best Italian Beefs". Section 5: Health & Lifestyle. Chicago Tribune (Part 1 of 2). Chicago, Illinois. p.1. Retrieved 2025-10-05. & "Beef" (Part 2 of 2). p.11.
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