From the very beginning, "The Bear" has treated its kitchen not just as a set, but as the beating heart of the show. Across four seasons, the Emmy award-winning FX series has charted the transformation of a scrappy Chicago sandwich shop into a fine-dining powerhouse. Behind the scenes, that meant creating a kitchen that didn't just look the part, but actually worked like the real thing too.

That choice — a relatively radical one in the TV landscape of cheat-sheet realism — raised the stakes. It meant real ovens, real fridges, real stoves, and a fire marshal on standby. The actors don't feign chopping or pretend to sauté; they actually do it. "Everything we do on 'The Bear,' as opposed to other shows, is real," prop master Laura Roeper tells The Set Set. "We actually cook." 

To design a space that could realistically pass inspection, the art department worked closely with culinary producer Courtney "Coco" Storer as well as cast member and real chef Matty Matheson. Early in the process of developing the kitchen, set decorator Eric Frankel mocked up cardboard cutouts of every major piece of equipment and invited the pair to mimic cooking in the space. "We had them moving around the cutouts of where the equipment should be to work out what made the most sense and to see the fluidity, because that's what the kitchen is all about," Frankel says.

And while some cinematic sleight of hand was necessary to expand the footprint of The Beef — the original restaurant owned by Carmy's brother — the layout was always grounded in reality. Production designer Merje Veski meticulously studied the look and feel of upscale restaurants, borrowing the "cleanliness and simplicity" of real-life Chicago restaurant Ever (which appears on the show) and the "natural wood" aesthetic of Matheson's own Toronto eateries. Thomas Keller's prestigious The French Laundry, a favorite of director and creator Chris Storer, was, of course, on the moodboard too. ​​

The goal was to create a kitchen and dining space with luxurious ambiance, yes, but also one that made sense financially and narratively. Veski leaned into imagining what Carmy and his team could plausibly afford. "They don't have money, and they are not exactly designers," she says. "So we thought of a simple plywood floor and plywood walls. It's something you could buy at Home Depot." 

Meanwhile, Frankel tackled tableware the same way. "We talked about doing custom plateware," he says, "but we asked ourselves, 'What can they actually afford?'" While KH Würtz — used at Noma — was also considered, in the end, they opted for a collection of Jono Pandolfi bowls and plates, paired alongside secondhand fine bone china from Royal Albert. "It was the perfect blend of affordability as well as the look that they wanted," Frankel says. The pots and pans in the kitchen were chosen for the same reason. "We used All-Clad and Made In," says Frankel. "It's affordable, functional, and it's what a serious kitchen would use." 

Another principle guided the team when it came to designing the space. "From the beginning, the star of the show had to be the food," Veski says. "So we thought everything else should be muted." Muted, but not without intention. "We came down to the basic colors we like: white and blue, and black as an accent," she explains. More than a minimalistic color palette, these colors were chosen precisely because they are "the complete opposite of colors that food can bring in" to any frame of the show.

Roeper initially approached the props like a chef would, sourcing only what's needed, nothing extra. However, she made an exception for Carmy, and his specialty Japanese knives became a subtle but important signifier of his fine-dining pedigree. "Once chefs reach a certain status, the first thing they do is spend money on knives," Roeper explains. By season four, Japanese knives are used throughout the kitchen, but observant viewers will note they're not all the same. "We distinctively separate what Sydney's using compared to what Carmy is using to what Tina is using," Roeper says.

The character-building extends beyond the utensils, and Roeper ensured there were distinctions between how each character logs the daily menu and the latest restaurant changes. "Chefs either use their phone or a notebook. That's something we witnessed going to the restaurants we work with." Sugar is notably never without her tech, opting for her phone or her laptop, both of which make sense for her hands-off role in the kitchen and relative luxury as the wife of a lawyer. Carmy and Sydney prefer to put pen to paper, and both use sleek, leatherbound journals from the small brand olpr (Carmy can also be seen with a Moleskine, which he uses for his sketches). Meanwhile, Sweeps — studying to be a sommelier in season four — uses a notebook from Stone, which features a wax coating, protecting it from accidental wine spills. "These little choices are made deliberately," Roeper notes. 

In the end, the kitchen in "The Bear" is not just a marvel of production design, it's a space where fiction and function blur. "It's still a set," says Veski, "but yes, everything works. It took extra work, but it was worth it." Frankel echoes the sentiment: "What we ended up with is great — and so functional. The actors are actually cooking, and if it weren't for health code rules, we could run a full service."