In a flashback toward the end of the season-three premiere of The Bear, Carmy spoons a luscious, lipstick-red sauce next to a paupiette of hamachi. We learn this blood-orange sauce is an allergy substitution for the fish’s original accompaniment, a fennel soubise that his very scary boss (Joel McHale) made him put on the dish. The dish is then brought to … Sydney! She smells the dish, photographs the plate, and smiles like she’s eating the best meal of her life. While they haven’t even met yet, it’s the first time Sydney and Carmy have formed a bond: Two chefs connected over smell and taste.
But was there something else going on? Something possibly sinister? Something possibly … Sydneyster, if you will? Up until this moment, The Bear viewers do not know that Sydney has a fennel allergy. In fact, she has definitely worked with fennel quite a bit over the course of seasons one and two, and quite possibly consumed it or least its seeds. Is Sydney a liar? Does she actually have a fennel allergy? If so, has she been withholding the fact that she does from everyone else on the show this whole time? Knowing the answer to these questions is essential to understanding who Sydney is as a person and a chef. Let’s investigate.
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Sydney is tasked with making family meal at the Beef, which is the first thing she makes that Carmy is going to taste. As is often the case with family meal, she has to use the ingredients they already have in the walk-in. The first thing she does is slice a fennel bulb. Just Sydney and fennel, ten minutes into the series. Clearly, this is meant to telegraph a significant relationship — a Sydneyficant relationship, if I may be so bold — between the young chef and the carrot’s fancy cousin.
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Later that episode, it’s revealed that Sydney was slicing the fennel for a fennel salad. We do not see her eat the salad, but it sure seems unlikely she wouldn’t at least have tasted it, since she’s a chef and tasting food is a thing chefs famously do. Now, Carmy ends up not eating what she cooks that day, but she didn’t know he wasn’t going to eat it. That said, we do see her eat something later in the episode …
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Sydney tries Carmy’s version of the Beef’s beef sandwich. Of course, beef isn’t fennel, and neither is sandwich bread. But giardiniera, the Italian relish, could have fennel in it. But how can we possibly know for sure if the Beef’s sandwich has fennel in the relish, thus confirming that Sydney ingested it? If only there was a recipe posted on a website? [… He says, leading the witness.] Wouldn’t you know, the Los Angeles Times had Courtney Storer, the show’s culinary producer and sister of the show’s creator, Christopher Storer, prepare the show’s version after the first season wrapped in 2022. From the post for the video: “Storer distinguishes hers by using fennel bulbs in addition to the traditional carrot, celery, and cauliflower.” [Closes a folder in a way that suggests the case is closed.] Well, well, well. [Dramatically reopens folder to suggest that actually there is more case.]
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The precocious Sydney wants to make her mark and impress Carmy, so she invents a dish of braised short ribs and risotto. We learn the risotto has an étouffée stock. Now, étouffée doesn’t include fennel bulb, but it does include cajun seasoning, which often includes fennel seed. While we are talking about fennel seed, sausage and peppers is one of the few other sandwiches the Beef sells, and Italian sausage most definitely has fennel seed. Fennel See-yd, if it pleases the court.
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After leaving the Beef, Sydney makes Marcus dinner, serving him Chilean sea bass with confit tomatoes à la Alain Passard. It’s not exactly clear what she means by this, as Passard’s confit tomatoes is a dessert, but either way, the official dish is called “Tomato Confit With Twelve Flavors.” Can you guess what one of the flavors is? Orange, you’re correct. Can you guess what another one of the flavors is? Yeah, fennel.
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Sydney goes on a little food tour of Chicago to help calibrate her palate. (Carmy was supposed to be there too, but we’re not going to get into that here.) The order we know for sure is at Kasama, her first stop. She gets the breakfast sandwich with longaniza, a hash brown, the mushroom adobo, a mango tart, and a matcha latte. We reached out to Kasama, and the longaniza doesn’t have fennel in it. Neither does the mushroom adobo. But that’s where things get interesting: The pork adobo does have fennel. Did Sydney specifically order mushroom instead of pork to avoid the dreaded foeniculum vulgare?
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Sydney is working on a complete mess of a dish with way too many ideas and components — components such as fennel pollen, fennel purée, and the triumphant return of her fennel salad.
Clearly, Sydney has handled fennel. She has cooked with fennel. She probably has eaten it. And now we know she’s purposely avoided fennel at least one time. The question is why does she say she has a fennel allergy when eating at the trauma-causing, three-Michelin-star New York restaurant Carmy is cooking at? The way I see it, there are three explanations:
The narrative goal was for Carmy to make something exclusively for Sydney, which means it would need to be a substitution, and since Carmy can’t accept substitutions that are simply because of preference, the only solution is an allergy. Why fennel? Unclear, other than maybe the fact that fennel and blood orange are in season at the same time of the episode, so both are around in the kitchen on the day they’re coming up with the dish and its substitution.
And she’s curious about what the restaurant would do with a substitution request like this. Maybe she’s doing some sort of chef test? The issue with this explanation is, according to my colleague at Grub Street, Chris Crowley, this isn’t a thing that chefs do.
So, she just hasn’t mentioned this to anyone she works with, and now she feels it’s too late to mention it. Or maybe it is more Machiavellian: Sydney is smart enough to know that if she were to work at the Beef (or the Bear, for that matter), this would mean involving herself with Italian ingredients like fennel, and if she’s going to work with Carmy, there might be some Nordic ingredients like fennel. But she wants to work with Carmy so much that she decides to just accept having occasional gastrointestinal distress or whatever. And if you consider her general vibe, it actually makes a lot of sense.
There is one piece of evidence to support this theory. In season three, episode seven, we get to see what’s inside Sydney’s medicine cabinet:
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Yep, it’s just Pepto and generic Pepto. [Closes a folder in a way that suggests the case is closed, looks up, smiles.]
