Salt without Saltiness: The Death of Hospitality in The Bear

“We cook to raise people.” Years before the events that make up the bulk of BearSeason threeCelebrity chef Thomas Keller relayed this mission statement from his mentor to fictional chef Carmen Berzato (Jeremy Allen White) in a flashback to Carmi’s first day at French Laundry. But what if a profession or institution dedicated to caring for others stopped caring and stopped caring? What if salt, an essential ingredient in the kitchen, loses its saltiness? Season 3 of Bearespecially when viewed in its first two seasons, serves as a warning against the kind of mission drift that can rob a caring institution of its hospitality. It’s a tragedy to be mourned, as the show depicts it, and the church would do well to take notice of how much our culture craves genuine care and welcome.

We don’t hear Keller’s quote until the beginning of Season 3, and yet the book… Bear Stack reminders of chef calls like dishes on a busy Saturday night. The series of characters, both lead and supporting, each have a moment throughout the series when they are connected to care. However, The Bear (the restaurant, not the show of the same name), is so dysfunctional and disinterested by the end of the season, leading to multiple broken relationships, potential staff unrest, and inconsistent service that even team members recognize on… It is “off”. “, and a less-than-stellar review threatens their financial future.

Carmi’s career up to this point has been defined by the pull between two opposing views of professional cooking. Keller, chef Andrea Terry (Olivia Colman), and the restaurant’s life-affirming style Sleep They all point to Karmi as a kind of demanding professionalism, not in spite of how much they care about their customers, but because of it. This type of cooking brings life, renews it and celebrates it. Chef David (Joel McHale), on the other hand, is only focused on coldly defined excellence for its own sake. What he praises is completely separate from those who actually consume the food. As Carmi tells it: “I don’t think he sleeps. I don’t think he eats. I don’t think he loves.” For my part, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a worse indictment of a hospitality professional.

Closer Season 3 gives us a specific moment in which Carmi completely surrenders to dragging the same abusive, hurtful, neglectful path when he decides to change the menu every day “so they can see what we’re capable of.” You probably won’t find this line on any lists detailing the best bids from Season 3, but it’s a crucial inflection point, setting the tone for the restaurant and the rest of the season. It’s not about the decision itself to change the roster, but rather the reason that prompted Carmi to show how misguided he was. This justification, along with other non-negotiables, is the work of a chef who no longer cooks to raise people; Karmi undertakes an impossible task to achieve pure perfection in the critical eyes of “they.” By the time Carmi has his long-awaited confrontation with the void in David’s driveway, he’s already been driving his own restaurant down David’s driveway for weeks.

We should not miss how the book depicts this mission drift. With the exception of flashbacks and supporting characters trying to keep the fire burning alone, both the viewer and the diner are bombarded by chaotic, disjointed menus and service that looks at numbers and dollars where we once saw faces and people. The food, once the bright, unheralded star of the show, verges on the bizarre in its repetitive, jarring camera angles. By contrast, filming in earlier seasons often reveled in beautiful dishes, showing us that the show’s crew holds no grudge against fine cooking, but instead against what happens when food is no longer an act of care.

One thing to note is that while rage is never far away in Season 3, there’s something else choking the bear: an empty, cruel hunger. The mix of sound jostling between over-excited and truly painful, the increased use of soothing tones, the blurry editing of time spent together, and the ugly mess of broken plates and stale dishes, all sound like a living organism struggling for air before succumbing to emptiness and decay. . The writers could have relied solely on profanity and pot-throwing to tell the story of cruel hospitality, but this immersive approach invites us to feel it. What we are given is worse than cacophony: at least the anger is alive. What we feel instead in the dull dining room and neglected kitchen is death—the death of purpose and the death of love. If you’ve finished Season 3 of this series about a diner feeling strangely unsatisfied and hungry, you’ve encountered the dark irony the writers aimed for.

Season 3 of Bear It works so well because of its profound impact, taking us away from the hope of revitalizing the place of hospitality and saving us from the pain of its collapse. We as a species were created to break bread together, whether we celebrate or mourn. We tend to be remarkably adept at knowing when the plate in front of us is empty or when the server has forgotten we’re there. Most of us have encountered a restaurant, home or church where “the vibe is weird,” as Neil Jeff Vack (Matty Matheson) says of his employer. How quickly do you want to leave if it’s not a place that interests you? Or how deeply saddened are you to see the welcoming fires fade away from a place where you once felt at home? We grieve because something meant to enhance life starves it instead. Our soul knows how wrong that really is. If that happened, there wouldn’t be enough “perfect” dishes in the world to satisfy our hunger.

It is a tragedy to be mourned when the kitchen, so long the beating heart of human society, loses its purpose of care. It is no less tragic when any other form of welcome or care dies, and this certainly includes the Church. This is personal to me because I am a minister, but perhaps even more important to my identity is that I am someone who truly enjoys cooking. I like to experiment, I like to create, and I admit, I like to show off from time to time. But it was the reward with my loved ones that attracted me, like many of the chefs we hear from Bear. I feel ecstatic knowing that the people I care about enjoyed the meal, but more importantly, there’s no connection like knowing that they I know they have a place at the table.

Connect hospitality, to be brief, He is My faith thus informs my ministry. That’s why the series caught my attention so quickly, and why season 3 was such a hit. In my personal kitchen, I felt the call to chase the next thing that squeezed what people really wanted, which was to be together. And in every arena of my life I constantly fight an ingrained thirst for perfection. As Mike Berzato (Jon Bernthal) reflects in flashback, the special moments in our lives tend to be around food, especially around food. With each other. I can’t do that well if I focus anywhere other than on the actual people I say I serve.

This lesson doesn’t stop at my kitchen doorstep. Sadly, many of us can list churches that have fallen into the clutches of evil such as abusive leaders and oppressive belief systems. But what about those who have lost their focus on care because they started chasing something ostensibly good for the wrong reasons? New programs, attendance numbers, budgets, or construction projects can all be just as positive as new recipes and huge meals, but without attention to their center, each will leave us distant and hungry no matter how much we consume. A church that forgets its mission of caring for people has lost its saltiness, and salt that has lost its saltiness is in danger of being thrown away along with the countless dishes that Karmi sends to the trash.

Season 3 often brings up the topic of legacy and gives us a lot to learn regarding what we’ll leave behind, but the saddest reminder arrives through the two funerals we witness in the current timeline. At the beginning of the season, Marcus says goodbye to his mother. He tells the assembled mourners that he enjoyed sitting in the kitchen while his mother cooked. In the end, the culinary community bears witness to the final night at Chef Terry’s famous restaurant Ever. Richie asks to spend Ever’s final service in the kitchen rather than the dining room for the same reason as Marcus: the kitchens in question were where they saw the magic of care happen, and where they learned how important it is.

We often think about who might come to our personal funerals, but if the church we attend were to close and a farewell funeral meal like the one held in Iver was held, who would attend? Will someone ask to stay in the kitchen one last time? Do they want to avoid the ugly arguments, unpopular recipes, and distracted service of a population too busy chasing other things, or do they want to see where the magic happens? If we deliver on our mission, they can look at our efforts and say with Chef Thomas Keller, “It’s all about care.”