Wait So ‘The Bear’ and ‘Burnt’ Share a Universe?

Imagine you are watching The Bear and you see a fork on the floor of the restaurant. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) clocks it and is confused. I clocked it and yelled, “Oh so that thing from Burnt is real?” And then came even bigger proof that they share the same universe.

In the 2015 film Burnt, Daniel Brühl’s character explains how you can try to spot a Michelin reviewer. “No one knows who they are. No one. They come. They eat. They go. But they have habits. One orders the tasting menu, the other orders a la carte. Always. They order a half a bottle of wine. They ask for tap water. They are polite. But attention! They may place a fork on the floor to see if you notice,” he said in the film. I really just thought that the fork thing was real. It isn’t. In fact, Michelin experts have been asked about the myth that started because of Burnt.

“No; they don’t drop a fork or a knife on the floor,” Michelin Guide international director Michael Ellis told WTOP. “They do tend to be often middle-aged gentlemen who are well-dressed and polite. One will go to the bar and order a drink and wait for the other one. One will order a tasting menu and the other one will order à la carte; that’s absolutely true,” he said.

So why the fork in The Bear? Apparently it’s in the same universe as Burnt, and that’s not the only proof!

There’s a scene in the season 3 finale with a quick montage of still images of chefs in magazines and articles within the universe of the show, and one of them is Bradley Cooper as Adam in Burnt, along with other images of very real chefs. So now we have the knowledge that, technically, Burnt and The Bear exist in the same world.

Let Carmy and Adam fight!!!!

Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) is not easy to work for. Neither is Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White). But Carmy has a team of people behind him who actually care about him. Adam cannot say the same thing.

The point of Burnt is that Adam wants his third Michelin star and is bringing in people he used to work with (who he has screwed over in the past) to help him get there. He thinks that they care about him and his legacy but they want to see him get what’s coming to him. Carmy is not that.

Carmy is a man people love and want to help even when he is his own worst enemy. They want to protect him in whatever way they can, but instead, they all end up forcing him to see logic. A universe in which Carmy and Adam would have to go head to head against each other? That I’d like to see.

The comparisons have always been there. From the start of The Bear, people have compared the two. Personally, I don’t get it (I liked Burnt fine), but I do think that people see an aggressive chef and think that the two are one and the same. So forcing those comparisons to stop by putting them in the same universe is funny to me.

Now, they are somewhat similar because that’s what the cooking world is like in both these stories, but Bradley Cooper’s picture being in The Bear is hilarious and perfect—and now I have about a million more questions about it.