Anyone Can Eat

I love Hulu’s The Bear. But I’ll let you in on a secret (one you probably don’t care about): I didn’t, not at first. Blasphemous, I know. Yet, there are reasons; perhaps, I struggle with coming around to new series—takes me too long to break in a pair of jeans. Sticking to the end with multi-season shows is hard. Or too many shows share the same Hero’s Journey. The dramatic pauses. The familiar notes. Yes, everyone tries to mimic or outdo Netflix. Disney, Amazon, Paramount, HBO, and NBC, I’m thinking of your corporate titan ways.

But Netflix’s superpower is that its executives know what we want before we want it; some claim TikTok shares the same omniscient powers.¹ Using vast amounts of data and a complex algorithm, they deliver the right show to a user at the exact perfect moment. Timing is hard; yet, necessary. Take the book Atlas Shrugged, some pan Rand’s magnum opus. Others revere its worldview. Read Dagny’s tale at twenty-five, you’ll never forget it. The quote, “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” will roll off the tongue. Find it in your forties; well, you might think it’s heresy. And stop before reaching that lengthy soliloquy—the one I rant about yet cherish. The content matters. Hemingway resonates due to his precision and the aura that he’s larger than life (He did run with the bulls and fight U-boats). Yet, one doesn’t have to write perfect sentences when culture and time intersect.²

To me, stepping back, both platforms are reinventing television network business models. Netflix started with what they thought was unique. Watch the entire series—binge it even. No commercials. Now TikTok streams in more bite-sized increments; I find it somewhat depressing we’re watching the saga of Friends’ Ross and Rachel in three-minute increments. Turns out, data suggests people like commercials, and the content doesn’t pay for itself. Now, corporate executives are building ads into the service. Going full-circle, Silicon Valley didn’t do anything revolutionary. The public wanted cable television anywhere, anytime—right in our pockets.

Platforms aside, The Bear found its stride, at least for me, in season three. The first two are superb but are almost too depressing—outside opening the sauce cans at season one’s plot apex. They struggle too much. Carmy is Carmy. Why can’t he pick up the phone and call Claire? Just make that phone call. I know, it’s hard.

But, finally, this season, the showrunners brought me the phrase, “Every second counts.” I love everything about this quote. The ethos of these three words is why a series succeeds and others fail. The same can be said for streaming platforms too. The Bear delicately balances the sign above the failing restaurant’s door, wrapping the ethos of perfection and how it’s unattainable. When one deals with food, perfection matters. It’s a craft where you can see it, touch, and, of course, taste it. People remember the experience.

The Stinging Smell of Beans

I remember crying three times involving food. The first happened after my son was diagnosed with a gluten allergy. And so, my wife and I began a quixotic quest to alter our diets. Hey, if he had to change, I was right there with him. I admit; this sucked. We were chasing windmills as if they were giants. But it was noble.

Kids love bread.

And Cookies.

Pizza too.

And an infinite amount of other such things made with flour—don’t forget pasta greatness. One of my kid’s favorite foods was dinner rolls found in a Bobby Flay cookbook. The Mesa Grill Dinner Roll.[^3)] The trick is brown sugar combined with cornmeal and flour. He loved them. Like fighting an old circus lion, I was determined to bring a slightly altered version to the dinner table. I researched flour types; conjured a full batch of rolls. The verdict? They smelled of beans—not the good kind. Worse, they were bullet hard. I’m not sure a diamond cutter could have broken them in half, stronger than titanium. I dropped one, and it cracked the plate. True story.

Yes, I shed a tear.

Time Goes By. More Culinary Tears.

My wife refused to give up; she’s a far superior cook (and person) than I am, trained by Emeril himself through hours of Food Network reruns. Remember the Bam? Or the famous towel tossed over the shoulder? Yes, those were the Food Network’s Glory Days when Bobby Flay was Grillin’ & Chillin.’

Somewhere, she discovered a gluten-free flour blend called Cup4Cup, created through rare cosmic magic by Chef Thomas Keller. And the chocolate cookies made from her hand tasted like… chocolate chip cookies. To this day, these were the best sweet treat I’ve eaten—Michelin Stars be damned.

My son, the hero in this tale, had to endure years without Froot Loops, Cheerios, Little Debbie, and an infinite amount of products found in convenience stores the world takes for granted. Eventually, the allergy subsided, a natural order of things for the lucky few. Still, for months, we tested different food types to reintroduce him to certain foods. And then, I realized he hadn’t eaten an Oreo. He was twelve years old.

I forget exactly how we caught up on lost food memories—it was a sure-fire rush to remember the amazing. What had I eaten as a kid he never tried? We stocked up on over ten boxes of cereal.

Glorious Chicken

Recently, I stumbled upon Bouchon, a restaurant specializing in French cuisine. Pound for pound (or dollar for dollar) it’s the best meal I’ve ever had. The owner and executive chef? Yes, Thomas Keller—he’s everywhere these days. He also made an appearance in the The Bear’s third season. Technically, numerous culinary masters played out their acting dreams. Here, Keller imparts life advice to Carmy, encouraging him to “come in every single day and just try to do a little better than the day before.” If you work at the French Laundry, the employee is part of something bigger. The work is a ripple in the pond until it spreads into an infinity.

Heavy, I know. But order the chicken. When I took a bite, my mind raced, like that scene from Disney’s Ratatouille, and I recalled those gluten-free baking trials and tribulations. I laughed. Of course, I shed my third tear. One can’t make up for lost time, but food can make you remember it.

Society often weighs invention by impact.

Electric cars, Elon Musk.

The iPhone, Steve Jobs.

Personal computers, Bill Gates.

The incandescent light bulb, Thomas Edison.

My popular invention list goes on to infinity and beyond. Penicillin. Airplane. Internet. Automobile. The camera…

But, for me, I’ll take the guy who made a certain flour—the one that anyone can eat.

Footnotes