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Here are ALL OF THE COOKBOOKS from The Bear Season 2

The definitive list.

JUL 7, 2023

Howdy cookbook fans!

Okay let’s talk about the cookbooks on The Bear. How are they different from last season? First of all, there are just a LOT more of them: we get shots at the restaurant in multiple places, Carmy’s apartment, elsewhere. Second of all, and it pains me to say this, a lot of them repeat, meaning I am not quite sure they are trying to tell us stuff about the characters through the cookbook selection as much as they are using the props they have access to. (Hello, Phaidon chef tomes.) That said, the list is pretty good? And pretty long?!

Anyway, we’re gonna pick them apart now. Buckle up. Also, here there be spoilers. You’ve been warned.

UPDATE: HOWDY cookbook fans! Exciting news! After my post on the cookbooks of The Bear season 2 ran on Friday, I got a DM from Eric Frankel…the set designer for The Bear season 2. Did I want to see the list of books he purchased for the new season, he wanted to know?

Where’s the fun in that?! was my response.

But, no, obviously I did. And with his permission, I have added the list to the bottom of the original article. You can also see those books below. Thank you, Eric!! Everyone say thank you Eric in the comments.

Episode 1: Beef

This is in Carmy’s apartment, which is, as ever, a half-empty mess. (I love the raised eyebrows moment we get from Syd when they go to his place to talk over the menu.) The first Eleven Madison Park book makes an appearance, foreshadowing a lot of love the show gives Daniel Humm and, particularly, Will Guidara later in the season. And the jacketless (and thus I assume much-used) copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers is a nice touch. We also have, starting at the bottom right and working up and left, Mexico City chef Enrique Olvera’s Tu Casa Mi Casa (which is his book for home cooks), Roger Vergé’s New Entertaining in the French Style, The Gaijin Cookbook by Ivan Orkin and Chris Ying, a book I can’t quite make out, Frida’s Fiestas by Marie-Pierre and Guadalupe Rivera (which is about food Frida Kahlo liked to cook), another book I can’t quite make out but is adorably tagged with post-its throughout, Culinaria Spain (I have the German edition of this series, it’s fine), couple more books I can’t make out, and The Chicago Tribune Good Eating Cookbook (there is that Chicago I was looking for!!).

To the left are a couple of books I can’t make out and there are too many cookbooks this season for me to detective them quite as hard as I did last year, but one is the first Ottolenghi (UK edition), there’s a copy of Art Fare (which was a cookbook put out by the Toledo Museum of Art to celebrate its centennial in 2000), Wookwan’s Korean Temple Food by Buddhist nun Wookwan, one of Tom Parker Bowles’s books, plus a couple more.

You can also see a shot of The Hungry Eye by Leonard Barkan in this episode, an interesting choice: Barkan is a comp lit professor at Princeton and the book is about the history of food aesthetics. From the jacket copy: the book “takes readers from antiquity to the Renaissance to explore the central role of food and drink in literature, art, philosophy, religion, and statecraft.” Getting deep!

Episode 2: Pasta

So, okay, that Trout book? Is exactly what you think it is. It is volume 1 of 2 in a book about trout fishing by trout fishing expert and Chicagoan Ernest Schwiebert. Are Syd and Marcus gonna go fishing? Stay tuned. Underneath: Giuliano Bugialli’s Classic Techniques of Italian Cooking. (We’ll see this one again later. Its spine is rather distinctive.) There are two more books we can’t see the spines or covers of in this shot but I would bet you $20 the bigger one is The Nordic Cookbook by Magnus Nilsson.

This episode is also where we get our first shot of the cookbooks in the office at the restaurant, but it’s pre-renovation and there aren’t as many. Plus we get a way better shot of them with Nat later, so I’m gonna hold off on those. There’s also a shot of Carmy’s apartment in this episode, but it’s the same books as last season and, ya know, been there done that.

Episode 6: Fishes

Among…many other things…this episode had, I thought, some interesting things to say about the (feminized) position of the home cook versus the (masculinized) position of the professional cook. Jamie Lee Curtis, whose character is an ambitious home cook, saying to Carmy: “I make things beautiful for them, and no one makes things beautiful for me” just absolutely floored me. That is probably a discussion for another time, but let’s talk about her cookbooks! Predictably they veer Italian: these seven fishes are NOT going to cook themselves, after all! I’m also seeing some easy weeknight dinner-type books, and would not be surprised if there were a couple of diet books in here.

First up, we see Good & Garlicky, Thick & Hearty, Soul-Satisfying, More-Than-Minestrone Italian Soup Cookbook by Joe Famularo. There’s also a copy of what I am pretty sure is the 1978 Betty Crocker, but I can’t find an image of the spine that’s not the spiral edition so. YMMV. The rest of them I am not familiar with and can’t make out, but I am sure some of you can! The one to the right of Betty and the two that look like part of a series closer to the left side, in particular, with the italicized word in them. And the one next to the Italian Soup Cookbook looks like a 4 letter name that starts with “R,” maybe a restaurant cookbook? It doesn’t look like any of Rao’s cookbooks though. Let me know in the comments!

In the kitchen, we get more books, and these really put the “stain” in Stained Page News. There’s a book called Simply Delicious, which is not in fact a Darina Allen title OR the 2003 Weight Watchers book of the same name, but rather, get this, a collection of recipes from the employees of Herberger’s, a now-shuttered chain of Midwestern department stores based in Minnesota and later Wisconsin. !!! There is a copy of a book called Fix It Fast, which I believe is the Pillsbury book, although Betty Crocker and Better Homes & Gardens have also published books with that title. Speaking of BH&G, we can see their famous plaid spine to the right of the microwave (it looks blue here but is actually red, see below, h/t Charles Vestal), and next to it is what I desperately wish to be the paperback edition of the 1997 Joy of Cooking, aka the first cookbook I ever bought, but I juuuuuust don’t think it works. Sigh.

Okay I could spend all day poking at this, but we have to move on to the big Kahuna.

Episodes 8 and 9: Bolognese and Omelette

Including these both together because there’s another shot of the office bookshelf in 9; the books are in an entirely different order (and also adorably there’s a series of index cards labeled “Giardiniera by Nonna” in the tighter, later shot <3) so there is some overlap. Time for bullet points! Starting at the top left and working our way down and to the right (and skipping the ones I don’t know and the ones that are repeated).

Top Shelf (missed the most here because they’re cut off):

  • I feel like someone can get the first book, which is published by Chronicle, but I didn’t get it quickly enough. Can’t identify the next three books, either.
  • The first book I can identify is The Salt Box Seafood Joint Cookbook, fifth from the left, by Ricky Moore.
  • Next to that is The Best American Food Writing 2019, and next to THAT a nearly identical spine I can only imagine is another Best American Food Writing year.
  • The next one I can’t confirm but sure looks like it says “On Baking.” Perhaps an earlier, jacketless edition of On Baking by Sarah Labensky, Priscilla Martel, and Eddy Van Damme?
  • The gold one with red lettering miiiiight be an edition of The Professional Chef, the Culinary Institute of America’s textbook. Do not hold me to that.
  • The Year of Eating Dangerously by Paul Parker Bowles, same one as is in Carmy’s apartment.
  • The Pastry one I cannot place and it is killing me because I KNOW we had this book in the office of the catering place I worked for in my early 20s. Please make me feel dumb in the comments by knowing what it is immediately but we gotta move on.
  • The Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit
  • The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones (a different edition than this links to)
  • La Buvette by Camille Fourmont and Kate Leahy
  • Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain
  • The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual by Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, and Peter Meehan
  • Bianco by Chris Bianco.

Second shelf from the top:

The shelf with El Bulli 2005-2011 on it:

Second to last shelf:

Bottom shelf:

All the books from the Episode 9 close-up that haven’t appeared elsewhere (or I didn’t clock them elsewhere):

UPDATE: Direct from Set, Here Are the Rest of the Books

THE BEAR HAS SPOKEN. After this ran on Friday, I got an Instagram DM from Eric Frankel, the Set Decorator for The Bear! He forwarded me a list of the books he purchased for this season, which begins with a nod towards LA’s Now Serving, South Pasadena’s Prospect, and Chicago’s Myopic Books, which is nice.

Okay here are the books we missed from this season, see if you can spot ‘em!

Whew. Y’all. That’s it. Oh, and Marcus has a bunch of Noma books in his station when he comes back from Denmark, obviously.

So! There were a bunch I didn’t catch. If you know what they are, drop em in the comments and I’ll update, with credit. COOKBOOK DETECTIVES START YOUR ENGINES can I get a yes chef?!

All in all a pretty good list? I’d recommend most of these. What say you? TO THE COMMENTS! I am going to have a glass of wine.

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July 7, 2023

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