Ever since The Bear debuted in 2022, the show has induced a level of obsession from fans. Interest in Carmy’s patchwork jacket from season one led to the discontinued design being resurrected, and audiences struck by the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross song from season three’s premiere sparked a streaming spike for an obscure Nine Inch Nails album.
Then there’s the food, which has seen fans attempt Sydney’s potato-chip omelette and Marcus’s chocolate cake. And for eagle-eyed viewers, there are the cookbooks that appear throughout the show: alongside influential titles by René Redzepi and Julia Child are a clutch of Australian cookbooks that have made their way into Carmy’s apartment and the shelves of his restaurant.
Peter Gilmore, executive chef of Sydney fine dining restaurants Quay and Bennelong, has not one but two of his titles featured throughout the series. Quay: Food Inspired by Nature sits on the office bookshelf of Carmy’s restaurant in season two, next to the monograph on Spain’s Mugaritz. Organum – Gilmore’s follow-up – emerges in Carmy’s apartment pile in seasons one and three, stacked near books by international cooking titans such as Ferran Adrià, Alice Waters and Elizabeth David, and gastronomic bibles by Paul Bocuse, Auguste Escoffier and Marcella Hazan.
Not that Gilmore, who watches the series, had noticed. “It’s news to me,” he says with a laugh. Writer Jane Lawson, a publishing veteran of 30 years who contributed to both titles, hadn’t clocked their cameos either, but says it was “pretty damn thrilling” to learn of their place in the illustrious stacks.
The presence of Australian titles on an American TV show about a chef aspiring to culinary greatness is intentional, says Eric Frankel, The Bear’s set decorator.
“From my first conversations with [The Bear’s creator] Chris Storer when we started designing the show, it was very important to showcase cookbooks from all over the world,” he says. “He supplied me a list of books he really wanted to have and then I spent weeks researching more.”
An encyclopaedic, globe-spanning collection would aptly reflect Carmy’s gastronomic fixation. “Quay and Organum are both what I would consider iconic books,” says Frankel. “Not only were they in [Carmy’s] apartment, but we filtered most of the books over to the restaurant as if he brought them in, so it would be a library for the staff.”
Quay, published in 2010, features signature dishes from Gilmore’s restaurant of the same name, such as the snow egg and eight-texture chocolate cake.
“Quay by Peter Gilmore was an absolute phenomenon,” says Jane Morrow, Murdoch Books’ publishing director. It was a lavish book, reprinted six times and an industry must-have. “Of course Carmy has a copy!” she says.
Frankel also included “deep cuts” to showcase Carmy’s insider knowledge. And the inclusion of Gilmore’s Organum has been described by one cookbook seller as “a big flex”. Although still available digitally, the physical edition from 2014 is out of print: there’s even a version going for more than $900 online. (“I need to sell my copy!” Lawson jokes.)
A $900 price tag might seem hefty, but Sydney-based illustrator Adriana Picker, whose drawings of wasabi, Murray cod, squid and sea urchin grace its pages, is aware of readers’ dedication to the book. She knows of one chef in New York who has the squid illustration tattooed on his arm.
Sweet: Desserts from London’s Yotam Ottolenghi and Melbourne-raised chef Helen Goh features in the restaurant’s office in season one. “Sweet made sense for the story,” says Frankel, referring to The Bear’s pastry chef, Marcus, and his evolving experiments with sugar and flour. “As we saw Marcus grow, I tried to filter in more books on desserts.”
One of Carmy’s references, featured in season one, is the decade-old reissue of The Complete Asian Cookbook: China by 93-year-old Australian cooking legend Charmaine Solomon. The Complete Asian Cookbook series has sold millions since its 1976 publication and remains in print.
Other Australian releases that appear on season two include Tom Walton’s More Fish, More Veg and Duncan Welgemoed’s Africola.
“After season one came out, I scoured forums of people talking about cookbooks from the shows and ones they had wished they had seen,” Frankel says.
That might explain the cameos of well-regarded references including Josh Niland’s James Beard award-winning The Whole Fish Cookbook and David Thompson’s Classic Thai Cuisine.
And while there’s debate over whether Rick Stein counts as a local chef (“We can’t really claim him as an Australian,” Gilmore jokes), his name is attached to Bannisters restaurant on the New South Wales south coast and his influential English Seafood Cookery is in Carmy’s home-reading pile.
Frankel says the entire cookbook library inspired ideas for the food in seasons two and three.
Although the Australian titles may be Easter eggs for local viewers, their presence could reflect something more. Quay has appeared in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list five times and yet Gilmore says being part of The Bear’s cookbook canon is a special kind of achievement.
“It’s quite a gesture of acknowledgment that we’ve impacted the culinary world,” says Gilmore. “From that level, it’s just a really nice thing … We’re held in good stead with a lot of my international peers.”
