The Bear FULL REACTION Season 3 FINALE: Forever

The opening scene was filmed at The French Laundry (the actual restaurant), and the chef teaching Carmy how to truss a chicken is not an actor, it's Thomas Keller, the owner and executive chef of The French Laundry. He's widely considered one of the best chefs in the world, and he has the distinction of being the only American chef to own not one but two Michelin three star restaurants - The French Laundry in Napa, CA, and Per Se in New York City. To put into perspective how big of a deal that is, there are only 13 restaurants in the entire United States that have three Michelin stars, and this guy owns two of them. Most of the people at the funeral dinner are actual well-known chefs and restaurateurs who were playing themselves, and most of them currently work in restaurants in New York City, but they've all worked in restaurants all over the world (like Noma in Copenhagen, also a real restaurant). Luca wasn't in New York, he was in Copenhagen working at Noma - he's the one who trained Marcus on fancy desserts last season. The guy Luca was fanboying before dinner was Grant Achatz, the owner and executive chef of Alinea, one of only two restaurants in Chicago with three Michelin stars. Achatz was a protege of Thomas Keller and honed his craft working under Keller at The French Laundry before he broke out on his own. Ever is a real fine dining restaurant in Chicago and this episode was filmed in the actual restaurant, but contrary to the lore of the show, it only has two Michelin stars and has never been named the best restaurant in the world. But two stars is still very impressive, and there are only two other restaurants in Chicago with that distinction. Also, it still very much open for business, and if you want to dine there, prepare to drop about $1,000 for two people when you include wine, tax and gratuity. The restaurant Eleven Madison Park in NYC, which is frequently mentioned on the show, is also a real restaurant, and it actually was named the best restaurant in the world in 2017. Will Guidara, the guy who compared running a restaurant to conducting an orchestra in this episode, was one of the co-owners of Eleven Madison Park until he sold his stake to his partner Daniel Humm in 2019. Guidara and Humm bought the restaurant in 2011 from another well-known New York restaurateur named Danny Meyer, whose biggest claim to fame today is being the founder of Shake Shack. Shake Shack was started as a hot dog cart in 2000 that was run out of the kitchen of Eleven Madison Park until Meyer opened the first Shake Shack restaurant in 2004. I won't go through the histories of all the other people who appeared in this episode from the culinary world, but when they were running the montage after the opening scene with the Weezer song playing, all of the people in the montage are rockstars in that world, and they all played themselves in this episode.

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