Overcooked and the First Season of The Bear
In the kitchen, the battlefield is set and frying pans are our most powerful weapons. #cinema #serietv #cucina #videogioco
Welcome back to Artcade, the restaurant that always serves food with the right pairing. Want an appetizer? Here’s the perfect wine. Want a first course? Here’s our special trio (at Artcade we even pair things in threes). By now it’s obvious: nothing here comes on its own. One more reason to chew over, digest, and share these articles with anyone intrigued by our strange art menu—whatever that means. And since we’re already in a culinary mood, let’s stay there. Enjoy the read!
The Bear is a series on Disney+ that’s been talked about a lot. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a young chef with big ambitions and a fine‑dining background, Carmy, who inherits a small diner and its chaotic management. The rhythm is relentless and every character is pushed to the brink of a nervous breakdown.
In my opinion, there’s another reason The Bear is fascinating. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in a professional kitchen, but this show throws you right into one—no filters, no polish—unlike the many glossy cooking reality shows. Kitchens look a lot more like the one in The Beef (the diner where the show is set) than the bright, staged ones on, say, MasterChef.
Here’s the trailer for season one, where the show’s frantic tempo really stands out. Season two takes a slightly different direction but is still worth catching up on. I haven’t seen season three yet, but I’ve got no doubts about its quality.
Christopher Storer (2022) The bear [Audiovisual work] [Drama/Comedy] [Season 1: eight episodes] (Disney+) Hulu
Overcooked! 2 is a co‑op arcade kitchen simulator. Clear enough, right? I know, it’s not clear at all—I barely know what I just wrote. Let’s put it this way: if The Bear shows you what a kitchen looks like, Overcooked! 2 makes you work in one. That makes more sense.
The plot? Negligible. Just an excuse to throw a flood of tickets (orders piling up at the top of the screen) at you to prep and serve as fast as you can.
From one restaurant to another, recipe after recipe, Overcooked! 2 pushes your organizational skills to the limit: prep ingredients, cook them, plate dishes, serve them, wash the dirty ones… all in sequence and in kitchens with their own built‑in obstacles that shift mid‑service. It may sound strange, but those stoves sliding around? A pretty accurate depiction of real kitchen chaos.
Overcooked! 2 becomes sublime with friends. Alone, you alternate between two chefs; with others, everyone controls their own character. Add a third or fourth friend and you’ll either become a flawless brigade—or (with ingredients on the floor, dirty plates everywhere, and pans on fire) you’ll end up screaming like judges on a cooking show.
Ghost Town Games (2020) [2018] Overcooked! 2 [Video game] [Simulation] [7 Hours] (Xbox Series X) [Linux, macOS, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4/5, Windows, Xbox One/Series S] Team 17
Information Desk:
Speaking of kitchen insults: want eight straight minutes of Gordon Ramsay yelling? Or do you prefer Joe Bastianich’s serial‑killer vibes on MasterChef?
Is The Bear really that good? Some call it a masterpiece. If you don’t believe it, here’s a video explaining why the first episode is “perfection”:
My last two coins
There’s something oddly comforting about chaos. In The Bear you breathe it in those narrow hallways at The Beef, between “Yes, Chef!” and pans sizzling like fireworks; in Overcooked! 2 you live it with a controller in hand, as the floor shifts, the dishes pile up, and your friendship with fellow chefs is tested by a charred sushi platter. The point is: frenzy can save people. Having ten, a hundred, a thousand things to do keeps you from thinking too hard, from looking around and reflecting. Have you noticed what kind of moment in history we’re living through? For many, it’s now easier to hide inside a horror game than read the latest news. So maybe it’s okay if the kitchen goes up in flames, if a customer waits, or if a dish ends up in the trash: they’re simple problems, contained within a single game. Sure, we might get mad at a failure, but those problems stay locked inside the console. The world outside? That one takes real effort and is scary as hell. So for today, let’s all shout together, “Yes, Chef!”, like a stadium chant. Let’s take a break. Tomorrow we’ll think about cleaning up the world.
Until the next episode, ciao!