After a truly immense and inspiring order at Kasama, the world’s first Michelin-starred Filipino restaurant, Sydney is off to a whole bunch of other Chicago classics, including Avec, Publican Quality Meats, Margie’s Candies, and Pizza Lobo. It seems like it was sort of a spontaneously generated idea, so you can’t blame him too much for thinking it was ditchable, but Sydney takes it especially hard in the wake of her conversations with her dad and basically every Chicago chef, restaurant owner, and front-of-house staffer she meets on her trek. In order to help Claire, Carmy had to blow off a day of tasting and foodie adventure with Sydney. Later on in the episode, we see him back at the Beef, where Neil, Richie, and Marcus have had to take down one of the key interior walls - but more on that later. After some gentle ribbing and casual hedging from Carmy, she ends up enlisting his help to move her mom’s things in a van, an act we don’t get to see onscreen but that presumably is both easy and awkward given that we’re dealing with Carmy here. She asked Neil for his number, and Neil - who calls himself Carmy’s best friend - provided it. First of all, she calls him out on giving her a fake number, telling him that he has clearly forgotten that she knows both his whole family and the Faks. If this season is about Carmy finding his joy, that could happen through the introduction of Claire, who seems to be shaking him out of his comfort zone. To Carmy’s credit, he’s refreshingly aware that “if I could provide more amusement or enjoyment for myself, it would be easier to provide for others,” which is a lesson we could probably all use a nudge on from time to time. These days, he still isn’t quite sure what he thinks is fun or how he can access that emotion since he’s always trying to remind himself to breathe, to be present, and that the sky is not falling and there is no other shoe waiting to drop. Back then, he says, anything that he thought could be fun got kind of fucked thanks to his overzealous and bumbling family, who often made promises they weren’t able to keep. As he explains, after Googling the definition of fun, he has spent some time mulling over “what provides amusement or enjoyment” in his life - not just recently but when he was a kid. The episode’s first big meal comes in the form of Carmy’s opening monologue, which is delivered via his check-in at group therapy. (But seriously - if the city’s tourism board isn’t lining up a sort of press trip or public passport based on spots and meals featured in The Bear, it’s blowing it.) If you haven’t been to Chicago on a gluttonous eating adventure in recent years, let this episode be a reminder that you absolutely should pull the trigger on that trip. 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. 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.
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