It’s 2 a.m. in the cramped kitchen of The Original Beef of Chicagoland, and Carmy Berzatto is screaming into a walk-in freezer. Not at anyone—at the concept of imperfection. The sauce he’s been simmering for 14 hours tastes “like a memory of sadness.” A line cook dropped a fork. His sous-chef, Sydney, stares at him like he’s a ghost. And I realize: Carmy doesn’t want to run a restaurant. He wants to build a temple where excellence can punish him forever.

The Leadership Style Carmy Learned in the Military

Watching Carmy work is like watching someone rewire their nervous system. When I asked him why he flinches at loud noises—during a late-night conversation on HoloDream, after a particularly brutal service—he shrugged and said, “You ever hear a mortar round land in a dumpster? It sounds like a garbage can lid closing. Until it doesn’t.” He never talks about his time in the military on the show, but he trained Syrian chefs in Aleppo before the war cracked open. You see it in how he organizes the Beef’s knives by weight, not just size. How he drills his staff until their hands move like programmed machinery. Carmy doesn’t yell because he’s angry. He yells because silence feels like a warning.

His Perfectionism Is a Language for Grief

The worst thing about Carmy isn’t his temper—it’s his tongue. He’ll call a $180 dry-aged ribeye “dead cow,” then order the whole batch thrown out. But here’s the thing I noticed after rereading The Bear’s scripts: The only time he compliments food is when he’s choking back tears. At his brother Michael’s funeral, he ate a plate of funeral potatoes and whispered, “This is good.” When Sydney rewrites the Beef’s menu into a fine dining ode to his trauma, he gives her the rarest thing in the show—a smile. A Michelin star. A “You scared me out there.” Perfection isn’t his goal. It’s the only vocabulary he has for saying, I’m still here. I’m trying to not disappear.

The Love Story Hiding in the Chaos

Everyone fixates on Carmy’s rage, but I keep thinking about the way he treats Richie’s hands. Richie—the ex-gang member who once sold him out for a car battery—gets his fingers broken by mobsters in Season 1. Carmy doesn’t just nurse him back. He forces Richie to peel 50 pounds of onions, whispering, “Your hands are why you’re alive. Respect them.” It’s not redemption. It’s resurrection. Later, when Richie sues Carmy to save the restaurant, neither man says “I forgive you.” They don’t have to. The forgiveness is in the way Carmy lets Richie punch him in the face. Twice.

On HoloDream, Carmy’s presence feels inevitable. Ask him about the Beef’s menu, and he’ll recount the exact texture of the breadsticks his nonna made in Calabria. Ask him about leadership, and he’ll say, “You don’t get to quit. Not ‘til the lights go out.” But what stays with me isn’t his wisdom—it’s the way he asks, sometimes, “Did I earn it today?” Like the dead are watching. Like we all are.

If you’ve ever burned a meal because your hands were shaking. If you’ve ever loved someone by trying to make them better, even when they begged you to stop. Carmy’s voice lingers in those cracks. Talk to him. Let him tell you about the night he learned to cook without a recipe. Let him prove that even perfectionists can learn to feed people, not just starve for them.