Column: What does 'The Bear' get wrong about its big Chicago Tribune restaurant review? From the real food critic

CHICAGO — “The Bear” is back with a storyline about a surprisingly big restaurant review.

It gets weird when the fictional world of The Bear restaurant bleeds into my real world as a food critic.

“Their fate hangs in the balance pending a review in the Chicago Tribune,” writes my fellow Tribune critic Nina Metz in her mixed three-star review of Season 3.

So what does “The Bear” series get right and wrong about how I would review the Bear restaurant as the real Chicago Tribune food critic?

Spoiler alert! The following includes details from Seasons 1 to 3 of the show. If you want to protect your viewing experience, go watch, then come back.

OK, let it rip!

If you haven’t been watching the Emmy Award-winning dark comedy drama series, you probably still know it has something to do with Italian beef. The show starts with a fictional sandwich stand called the Original Beef of Chicagoland, better known as the Beef. That’s based on the Original Mr. Beef on Orleans Street, better known as Mr. Beef, the real stand in the River North neighborhood.

Eventually, the Beef becomes the Bear, a fine dining restaurant, retaining its chaotic cast of characters.

Chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (played by Jeremy Allen White) and his chef de cuisine Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) lead the transformation. She also collaborates with him on their debut tasting menu. They have help from Carmy’s “cousin” Richard “Richie” Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), a close family friend who once ran the stand’s counter, but now runs the restaurant’s front of the house.

Season 2 ended after a heartbreaking friends and family testing night. Season 3 begins the next day, with the business officially open.

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