The Bear Season 2 Exchanges Chaos Cooking For An Elegantly Imperfect Fine Dining Experience

Contains spoilers for "The Bear," Season 2, Episode 2

If you're all hyped up for Season 2 of "The Bear," no doubt you already know what to expect since you probably watched Season 1, right? Just in case you're having a mental Emmentaler moment (we get it, we've all been there), the first season ends with Carmy and crew finding a stash of cash and deciding to convert their sandwich stand into a gourmet restaurant. The specialty of the house? According to Carmy's sous chef Sydney, who is as volatile as she is lovely, it will be something called "chaos cooking."

While at our house this might look like burning burgers and exploding eggs, these would-be restaurateurs have something far more ambitious in mind. As Carmy and Sydney free-associate, the proposed new entrees include such delights as hamachi crudo, tenderloin with cherry vinegar, sardine piri piri, and some kind of dish involving smoked bone marrow and frozen Concord grapes. Even in Chicago, this is hardly everyday restaurant fare, but we'd totally be up for trying it. One thing they do not add to the menu, though, nevertheless shows how Sydney can think way, way out of the box in a pinch: lamb ragu served over King's Hawaiian rolls. She tells Carmy she once pulled this out of her back pocket (well, not literally, since messy) when catering a private function after her fresh pasta failed. Carmy, in turn, floats the idea of a veal stock-vanilla ice cream sundae.

Despite their shared enthusiasm for kitchen experimentation, things don't always go smoothly with Carmy and Syd's menu-making methods. One sauce that the two try is way too acidic, so much spitting out and various obscenities ensue. In another instance, grapefruit is burned and over-salted (accompanied by more spitting and swearing), while a plate of stuffed pasta is also a fail. As we watch the chefs work through the menu, sometimes it seems they do more spitting than swallowing and we wonder how they'll ever pull things together in time for the restaurant's grand opening. Luckily, this is fiction, so a little authorial intervention will likely do the trick an episode or two down the line.

What lessons were learned here in this episode by restaurant staff and audience alike? The way we see it is, sometimes mistakes need to be made. That, after all, is how we all learn and grow. The Bear's chaos menu is still a work in progress, but we have every confidence that it will get there, given time. Oh, and we learned one more helpful hint courtesy of Syd that applies to both restaurant industry workers and recipe experimenters: Always carry a roll of Rolaids since you never know when they'll come in handy.