What's happened in The Bear so far?

The Bear will soon return to the UK for its third course, with the full third season landing on Disney+ on Thursday, 27 July for viewers to binge-watch to their hearts content.

Set in Chicago, the series follows professional chef Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) who inherits his brother's restaurant after his death by suicide, and tries to bring the eatery back from the brink of collapse. FX's kitchen drama may be a big conversation starter but for some viewers a refresher could help ahead of the release of the third season.

Here is everything you need to remember from The Bear seasons 1 and 2.

What happened in The Bear season 1?

The drama opens by setting up its initial premise: Carmy arrives in Chicago to take over his brother Mikey's (Jon Bernthal) restaurant The Original Beef, a failing sandwich joint that his sibling all but run into the ground before his death and is $300,000 in debt to their uncle Cicero (Oliver Platt)

Carmy's arrival is not a welcome one to the staff: Manager Richard "Richie" Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), chefs Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson), and pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) all resist his changes and vision for the restaurant, preferring to keep things as they were.

In order to help give the restaurant a boost, Carmy hires talented young chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) and she too finds it a challenge to assert her dominance over the kitchen.

Sydney has lots of new ideas for the kitchen and The Beef's menu, and Carmy is all for experimenting to reinvent the place but it has to be perfect, and he challenges her to be better. This stems from his own experiences in fine dining restaurants, where he was constantly bullied for not being good enough.

In order to understand why his brother took his own life Carmy visits AI-Anon, a space which helps him to better understand his own fragile mental health. As Carmy and Sydney make plans for The Beef, Richie, Tina and Ebraheim struggle with the new world order but Marcus embraces the challenge of becoming a better pastry chef.

It is also revealed that Richie sold cocaine in order to keep the business afloat during the pandemic, but Carmy makes him promise to never do that again, and he agrees. Sydney is able to help The Beef avoid a crisis by creating an outdoor sandwich service using a makeshift barbecue, but as things begin to pick up at The Beef now that Carmy and Sydney are at the wheel tensions rise in the kitchen.

The young chef wants to add a risotto dish on the menu, but Carmy doesn't think it's right and tells her to go back to the drawing board. Rather than waste the meal, Sydney gives it to a customer who turns out to be a food critic that was moved by her kind gesture and gives The Beef a favourable review.

Read more: The Bear Writer Claims ‘Evil’ Streamers Want Writers to Be ‘Homeless’ (IndieWire, 3-min read)

Their success seems all but assured until Sydney realises she left the pre-order option open for The Beef's to-go sandwich orders, and when the team are faced with countless orders and a busy lunch service everything goes to pot.

The staff begin to buckle under the pressure, Sydney accidentally stabs Richie and Carmy lets his anger out on her for the overwhelming situation they are in. Sydney decides to quit because of Carmy's attitude and so does Marcus.

In the tense finale, the remaining staff cater a bachelor party but things go wrong when a fight breaks out and Richie becomes involved, he is charged with aggravated assault. Realising he can't do things on his own, Carmy apologises to Marcus who returns to the restaurant.

After becoming lost in his head and failing to put out a kitchen fire, Richie decides to give Carmy a letter from his brother who also wrote about a spaghetti recipe that referred to the tomato tins that are meant to be used. When Carmy checks the cans he discovers that his brother actually hid money in all of them, thus saving the restaurant from its financial woes... for now.

Deciding to make amends, Carmy also apologises to Sydney who agrees to return, and he also makes preparations to close the restaurant. Season 1 ends with him putting a sign on The Beef's door declaring that the restaurant is closed and will reopen with a new name: The Bear.

What happened in The Bear season 2?

With their financial problems seemingly behind them, Carmy decides to build the restaurant back up from scratch, with the first few episodes dedicated to the team's refurbishment of the business and racing to open in order to make good on their deal with Cicero. The family friend agreed to loan Carmy an additional $500k on the condition that The Bear opens within 18 months or he takes ownership.

Sydney and Carmy begin to develop the menu for the restaurant, while the team start to go through training so that they are ready for when it reopens. Sydney asks Tina to be her sous-chef, much to her delight, and she begins to go to culinary school alongside Ebraheim.

While Tina takes to culinary school well, Ebraheim struggles with the experience and tries to quit. As this is happening, Marcus travels to Copenhagen to learn from skilled pastry chef Luca (Will Poulter) so that he can create three unique desserts for the restaurant when it reopens.

Construction on the restaurant faces delays, but Carmy finds new purpose outside of the kitchen when he reconnects with his school friend Claire. He deliberately gives her the wrong number, but she manages to get his real number from someone else, and confronts him about his avoidance — in the end, the pair start to see each other on a casual basis.

Tensions begin to rise between Carmy and Sydney as the latter begins to realise that her counterpart is making major decisions without her, despite the fact they're supposed to be equal partners. With Carmy starting to focus more on Claire, Sydney continues to work on the menu with Tina who is thriving at culinary school.

The Bear also steps back into the past to give viewers a taste of what Carmy's family life was like while his brother was alive, in a breathtaking, heart-wrenching flashback episode viewers watch as chaos descends on the family at Thanksgiving. The episode, Fishes, sees Jaime Lee Curtis star as Carmy, Michael and Natalie's mother Donna whose emotional unpredictability clearly explains why they are the way they are in the present day.

Richie is the last of The Bear's staff to be sent to train before opening, and the episode Forks is dedicated entirely to his character as he goes to work at Ever, an upscale fine dining restaurant, to learn how to be a leader in a restaurant. Olivia Colman makes a cameo as one of Ever's chefs, and Richie comes out better for the experience.

Ten days before the restaurant's opening, Richie returns with newfound confidence from his work at Ever while Tina and Ebraheim reconcile over his decision to quit culinary school. In the end, Ebraheim agrees to man the takeout sandwich window that the restaurant is keeping as a reminder of its heritage. Marcus also returns and has an impressive list of desserts for The Bear's grand opening.

Sydney and Carmy stress over the potential failure of the restaurant's fire surpression test, in the end the day is saved when Fak realises that Michael had disabled the fire suppression system when he tried to commit fraud by burning down the restaurant. He fixes the issue just in time for the test, meaning that the restaurant is ready to open.

The Bear prepares to launch a soft opening for family and friends, Sydney feels pressured to impress her father while Carmy's stress leads him to forget to replace the walk-in refrigerator's door handle (more on that later). Sydney confronts Carmy over his lack of focus on the restaurant because of Claire, and he apologises to her and gives her a custom-made chef's uniform.

With two weeks of reservations, The Bear opens to customers. The season finale focuses on their family and friends day, and things begin to get out of control when the restaurant runs out of forks and Carmy accidentally locks himself in the refrigerator. Carmy begins to spiral, ranting about his relationship with Claire which leads her to leave him after she overhears his complaints, while he and Richie have a heated argument through the door.

Despite the setbacks the restaurant's first day ends as a success. Sydney gets a boost from being able to lead the kitchen successfully without Carmy and receiving her father's approval. Carmy meanwhile comes to regret his actions with Claire as he hears a voicemail she left him in which she said she loved him, and is left wallowing in self-loathing until he is let out of the refrigerator.

The Bear season one and two are available to watch on Disney+ now.