Tomorrow (The Bear)

Summarize Fact Check

The episode is presented as a nonlinear, intertwining collection of flashbacks as Carmy goes to work the morning after the soft opening of The Bear.

Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) spends years working for renowned chefs at various restaurants. He first stages at The French Laundry, then returns to Chicago to work for Chef Terry (Olivia Colman) alongside Luca (Will Poulter) at Ever, where he eventually rises to the CDC position. Impressed with Carmy's talent and dedication, Chef Terry sends him to Copenhagen to work at Noma under René Redzepi, an experience he cherishes.

Carmy returns home from Copenhagen for Christmas, but after a tumultuous family dinner,^[a] he takes up his cousin Michelle's offer to move to New York City to pursue his career, where he stays with her and her boyfriend Stevie (John Mulaney). Sugar (Abby Elliott) sees him off at O'Hare, expresses a fear that she'll never see him again, and slips $1,000 in Carmy's jacket pocket that he had previously refused to take from her. In New York, Carmy first works for Daniel Boulud at Daniel, and later David Fields at Empire, the latter of whom harshly criticizes and berates Carmy for his mistakes while instilling in him the "subtract" principle: using as few ingredients as possible. Carmy develops a hamachi dish with a blood orange sauce and garnish only for Fields to have him swap out the blood orange for fennel to exert his ownership over the dish, but Carmy discreetly substitutes one plate back with the blood orange, which is served to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri).^[b]

While Carmy is working at Empire, Natalie calls him to inform him that Mikey (Jon Bernthal) has died by suicide. While the family attends the funeral, Carmy cannot bring himself to enter the church and stays in his car. He also gets into a conflict with Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) when Mikey gives Carmy ownership of The Beef.^[c]

After being freed from the walk-in refrigerator,^[d] Carmy apologizes to Sydney for having abandoned her during the soft opening. He later leaves a message to Richie apologizing for his tirade at him while trapped in the fridge. Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is devastated upon discovering that his mother has died, and Sydney leaves him a message offering her condolences.

One of the establishing shots from "the morning after" shows a Metra train departing Ogilvie Transportation Center. Carmy arrives early to the empty Bear. He cleans up a full ashtray, empty wine glasses, and cloth napkins discarded on one table, rearranges the tables, puts place settings and candles on every table, uses the existing massive bouquets to fill bud vases with what looks like peach ranunculus and golden wattle, and kicks the bar cart and metal ice bucket across the dining room. Synthesizing his past work experiences, he prepares a brand new set of courses for the menu and creates a list of "non-negotiables" for the restaurant to follow, so that it can perform at the highest of standards.

Carmy seems to work alone at the restaurant all through the last weekend of May 2023. His green-tape labels are dated 5/27. About halfway through the episode, when Claire checks her text messages, it is 9:30 a.m. and then there is a cut to Carmy cooking in the Bear kitchen, with light streaming through the front window. When Carmy finally steps back and surveys the several dishes he has prepared, it is 9-something at night, and dark outside.

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

In May 2024, Hulu confirmed that the first episode of the season would be titled "Tomorrow", and was to be written by series creator Christopher Storer from a story he co-wrote with cast member Matty Matheson, and directed by Storer.^[1] It was Storer's eighth writing credit, Matheson's first writing credit, and Storer's 13th directing credit.^[2]

• Chef Dave Beran, who trained Jeremy Allen White and Will Poulter at Pasjoli in Santa Monica, California, as part of the show's pre-production culinary training for actors, appears as chef de partie in Chef Terry's kitchen.^[3]
• Famous chefs guest star as themselves, mentoring the Carmy in-universe: "Boulud teaches Carmy how to prepare one of his most famous dishes, while [René] Redzepi gives Carmy a nod across the room."^[4]

Matty Matheson contributed to the story of this episode, telling a press pool reporter, "I think a lot of people that have had amazing careers...have worked under a lot of chefs. There's little pieces that you grab onto throughout your life, and that's how and what makes you who you are, the good and the bad. In culinary school, I had this chef that told us this story about how 30 chefs made who he was and told me this story about working under all of these chefs all over Europe and working with chefs and cooks and just learning all of these different trades...Picking up these little skills along the way—and you never stop learning—is who you are made of, you know? The people around you. We wanted to tell a story of...how Carmy was built."^[5]

On the episode's structure, Jeremy Allen White said, "It felt very fresh and new. It felt very exciting in its structure and style. It felt different, while also being very much at the heart of the same tone as the show."^[6] Regarding the conversation between Carmy and Sugar, White explained, "So often and so frequently, Sugar does this beautiful thing where she's really reaching out to Carmy. And he feels incapable of reaching back or being like, accepting in some kind of way. I think for that scene, for Carm, he just felt like he had to go, there was nothing left for him in this place anymore."^[7]

• In the flashback where Carmy is journaling on Lille Langebro bridge in Copenhagen, he wears a vintage Filson flyfishing vest that the costume department purchased on eBay.^[8]
• In the flashback where Sydney is presented with the hamachi blood orange dish made by Carmy, she is wearing a "printed midi dress from Dries Van Noten's fall/winter 2018 collection."^[9]

• Carmy's food journaling is depicted in this episode's flashback scenes. He appears to use Leuchtturm1917 journals from a company based in Geesthacht, near Hamburg, Germany.^[10] Associated with Sharpies since "Review," Carmy uses a 0.7-mm-tipped Pilot G2 pen to write out his list of non-negotiables.^[10] According to California restaurateur Greg Ryan by way of The New York Times, these pens are commonly used by kitchen expediters because they "work well on receipt paper, don't smudge, have a fine tip, and write super-smoothly."^[11]
• Carmy and Luca are shown juicing blood oranges with Zulay cast iron juicers, powder-coated navy blue.
• Elsewhere in the Bear-verse, there is a framed Patrick Nagel poster hanging in the hallway behind Richie when he is trying to get someone (presumably Mikey) to come out from behind the locked door.
• While revising the Friends & Family menu in order to present Sydney with a suite of simpler or more refined dishes when she comes in to work on Monday morning, Carmy uses an array of kitchen tools including a Benriner-brand mandoline slicer and a Vitamix blender.^[12]
• Carmy makes the ravioli using a wooden mold by John Francis Designs that was specifically developed "with no patterns to distract from the beautiful runny yolk" for use on The Bear season three.^[13]

Jeremy Allen White filmed scenes at the French Laundry in Yountville, California, United States, and at Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, during the last week of May 2024.^[14][15] The show filmed in the kitchen gardens at both restaurants.^[16] At Noma, Carmy "picks flowers, spring onions, and pea pods."^[17]

White also filmed at Restaurant Daniel in New York City with Daniel Boulud,^[18] who taught Carmy how to prepare Boulud's "signature crispy paupiettes of sea bass dish."^[19] Boulud posted on Facebook about the experience, writing, "Filming at Restaurant Daniel for the season-three premiere was done entirely au naturel—no retakes, no gimmicks. The experience was as raw and real as it gets. Jeremy Allen White's incredible talent shines through as he dives in with a perfect blend of fearlessness and confidence. A truly remarkable experience!...Cooking with Jeremy was like cooking with my young chefs. He is a great cook, fast learner, and extremely focused."^[19] The scenes with Boulud feature some glamour shots of his restaurant's French-made Mauviel-brand copper pots and pans.^[12]

Sydney is served the blood orange hamachi in a part of the Railway Exchange Building dressed to look like a restaurant dining room.

According to cinematographer Andrew Wehde in an interview with Panavision:^[20]

"Because ['Tomorrow'] wasn't a dialogue-based episode, so much of it was us going into spaces and just shooting. It was a very small, intimate team: me, operator Gary Malouf, and 1st AC Matt Rozek. I control the look, Gary controls the way it's moved, and Matt controls what's in focus...Gaffer Jeremy Long and key grip David Wagenaar were obviously part of that situation, along with some other help. We would roll into The French Laundry or wherever, and we were harnessing what these places already are, finding the most beautiful way of capturing them. The episode lives on three lenses: the H Series 28mm, 35mm, and 55mm. We needed the audience to go on this journey with Carmy in all these places, and what we captured came from the power of light and the power of these three lenses. I use no filters. The lenses are so powerful that if I added any filtration, it would only change the natural beauty of what the lenses are doing. The portrait work on our show has this sharp, crisp focus on a singular spot, whether it's Jeremy's eyes or a piece of the food. But the organic, natural falloff around them doesn't feel like a portrait that you would normally see on a 75mm or a 135mm. It has this dreamy quality to it, and it never feels harsh. We always talk about the fact that the most beautiful cookbooks around the world have their food photographed in a way that's soft and bloomy, and it makes you love what you’re looking at versus making it something sterile...The biggest difference between episode one and the rest of season three is that episode one is shot to feel large-format. We shot it as wide open as possible to give us that isolation of Carmy, because that dude is in his own world. We wanted everything to be focused just on him."^[20]

According to Scott D. Smith, a career sound mixer and head of The Bear's audio recording team since the pilot episode, the real Ever restaurant, which is the setting for several flashback scenes in "Tomorrow," has remarkable sound baffling. He wrote in an article for a film-industry journal in 2025, "This restaurant incorporates some of the best sound treatment I've ever encountered for a front-of-house dining area. With absolutely nothing that would clue the average diner as to how the room was treated, I had to look very carefully at the walls and ceiling areas to figure out how the architect and builders had treated the surfaces. At the end, I remarked to Chef Duffy, 'I would eat here based on the acoustics alone, even if the food was terrible.' I wish every location where we shoot could be as good as that one."^[21]

The use of sound in the current timeline is also striking; as one writer described the scene where Sydney and Carmy reconnect in their kitchen after he is cut out of the locked walk-in refrigerator, "The scene begins with a buzzing background static, and as soon as Carmy utters the phrase, 'I'm sorry,' the static cuts, and the close-up shots of him and Syd turn more intimate. Carmy tells Syd that he left her alone, and Syd says not to let it happen again," which conveys "catharsis" as the two "continue to act as balms for each other's distress".^[22]

Editor Joanna Naugle said in an interview with Immersive Media that the episode is ruminative and repetitive by design:^[23]

"It's playing on the idea that these are memories for the characters, but also memories for the audience. They also experienced this in a different time. I think that repetition of reusing footage is so great, and 301 especially is so much repetition...I'm kind of not sure where [Carmy] mind is [after the events of the season-two finale], so I loved having 301 be a place to get meditative with him. He's cycling through all these different times in his life. Anybody who is creative or has a creative pursuit has thought about, what are all the little things that made me the artist I am or the person I am? It's the people who didn't believe in me. It's people who did believe in me. It's the family members who pushed me away. It's the family members who supported me."^[23]

The entire episode is set to the same single piece of music, "Together", composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for their 2020 Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts V: Together.^[24] Range magazine commented "The track's ethereal, dreamy cadence deepens the episode's construct as a stream of consciousness, feeding off the negative, liminal spaces that define Carmy's daily grind."^[25] A different track from Ghosts V looped throughout the episode immediately prior, "The Bear."^[26]

The episode, along with the rest of the season, premiered on June 26, 2024.^[27]

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

A key element of "Tomorrow" is Carmy creating and plating the paupiette of hamachi with blood orange sauce, which is more than likely "the best meal" Sydney ever had that she described in passing to both Marcus in season one's "Braciole" and Carmy's mom, Donna Berzatto, in the season four wedding episode "Bears."^[28][29]

Paupiette is a classic French form of fish cookery whereby a thin slice of fish (for instance, tuna, sole, whiting, or even anchovy) is stuffed, rolled, and tied up with a string before being poached in stock.^[30][31] Hamachi describes young Japanese amberjack (Seriola quinqueradiata), also known as yellowtail, farm-raised and prized for use in sushi and sashimi. The smaller fish are the hamachi, larger ones are called buri but it is unusual for even the bigger fish to get larger than 20 lb (9.1 kg).^[32] Hamachi is expensive and said to be worth it because of its "smooth, almost-melting mouthfeel."^[33]

Carmy is first depicted juicing blood oranges during his time working for Chef Terry at Ever. Blood oranges are a type of citrus fruit with reddish flesh and skins that produce a deep red, almost maroon, sweet-tart juice. They primarily grow in California and around the Mediterranean region.^[34]

Carmy's first iteration of the dish used dill, which Fields rejected with the edict "never repeat ingredients," which in turn seemed to influence Carmy's season three dictate to the Bear restaurant staff that they were going to change the menu every day.^[35] "No repetitions" is one of the rules of a Thomas Keller kitchen.^[36] At the French Laundry, the nine-course menu changes daily and "No ingredient can be featured more than once on each night's menu, with the exception...of truffles, caviar, and foie gras."^[36]

The dish that was served to Sydney in New York was a one-off, served on the pretext that the diner had an food allergy, fennel soubise being a key element of the plate. (Soubise is an onion-purée sauce derivative of béchamel.)^[33] Syd has worked with several forms of fennel multiple times since joining the crew of the Beef, including for the first family meal she prepared on her first day, and she thus almost certainly does not have such a food sensitivity.^[37][e]

Jeremy Allen White told the Daily Beast in June 2024, "There is this connection between these two people that existed before they even met...Then, that gets you thinking about, like, what a beautiful thing it is to prepare food for someone. How you're connected forever, in some way, dining in these restaurants."^[39]

• Carmy scratches several dishes off the list of offerings at the soft opening, including the welcome broth, focaccia, lettuces, bucatini gricia, and the seven fishes.
• Carmy creates and labels several sauces: saffron fumet, demi, brown butter, nettle purée, squash velouté.
• He creates a floral bouquet of sheeted slow-roasted carrot and salmon roe nestled into a tart shell laid with a bed of carrot pureé, garnished with carrot greens and what looks like either wild fennel or dill blossoms.^[40][41]
• According to culinary producer Courtney Storer, the dish with the peas "recognizes his relationship with Chef Terry and [how he] loves her, and it makes...his plate...an homage to her."^[42]
• He iterates the welcome broth into a mirepoix consommé, which demands a fortune in brunoise-cut carrots, onion, and celery.^[43] (Culinary penance: Twelve rosaries, a Hail Mary, and a thousand thousand perfect cuts, etc.) (Technique, technique, technique.)
• One of the dishes Carmy makes to present to Syd when she comes back to the restaurant on Monday is raviolo al'uovo with pancetta dust.^[33] According to Epicurious magazine, raviolo al'uovo is a fragile but "sophisticated and sexy" dish featuring a "lovely golden egg yolk nestled in a bed of creamy ricotta cheese, all wrapped up in a tender blanket of pasta. Cut these lovelies open, and the yolk flows out of the center."^[44] The Bear commissioned a "simple" but elegant wooden pasta mold specifically for this dish.^[13]

• While at Noma, Carmy works in the garden and greenhouse, harvesting baby turnips, purple peacock broccoli, snap peas; B-roll highlights the chicken coop, honeybee hives, hollyhocks, snapdragons, a Buddha's hand citron. He gathers elderflower blossoms with other trainees, and tastes dried rose petals. He totes around scallops in their shells, and one of the Noma trainees demonstrates how to correctly cut squid.^[45]
• Boulud demonstrates dicing leeks; Carmy learns how to prepare two of Boulud's signature dishes: scallops with truffle wrapped in spinach and puff pastry, and crisp paupiettes of sea bass in Barolo sauce.^[46][11]
• One of the dishes being assembled in Chef Terry's kitchen is a variation of the real-world Ever's tasting-menu dish "carrot terrine with black olive powder, pistachio purée, and yuzu."^[47][48]

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone wrote, "The premiere, 'Tomorrow' is the sort of thing that only a show this beloved can get away with. Though it offers us glimpses of Carmy and the others in the immediate aftermath of the soft opening, it's less interested in its eponymous day than in all of Carmy Berzatto's yesterdays. [...] There's dialogue here and there, but the whole thing is essentially a tone poem, working to put us inside our hero's head even more than usual. [...] It's a lovely table-setter for the season."^[49]

Marah Eakin of Vulture gave the episode a 4 star out of 5 rating and wrote, "Carmy can't control all that no matter how hard he tries, even after countless tough hours spent working in kitchens worldwide. However, if we know anything about The Bear, none of that will preclude Carmy from putting immense pressure on himself to somehow circumvent it anyway."^[50] Matt Singer of Screen Crush wrote, "Though not the most conventionally satisfying episode of The Bear, I wondered whether 'Tomorrow' was meant to suggest Season 3 as a whole will be structured like one long tasting menu. In which case this episode could be seen as the equivalent of a chef preparing for work by gathering their ingredients. With that out of the way, they can now start to turn up the heat."^[51]

A.J. Daulerio of Decider wrote, "Filled with quiet walks, gentle plant tending, cozy houseboats, sparkling workstations, and inspirational dough rolling by a stoic pastry chef named Luca, this episode proved that the characters (and the audience) are allowed to breathe every once in a while."^[52] Josh Rosenberg of Esquire wrote, "The Bear is still asking which part of the artistic process brings happiness: the work or the reward? Is it selfish to want to enjoy the experience, too, or is it that self-centeredness that drives you to put blinders on in the pursuit of glory? I can't promise that Carm will find an answer by the end of season 3."^[53]

In a less positive review, Jenna Scherer of The A.V. Club gave the episode a "B–" grade and wrote, "'Tomorrow' itself is an odd dish, combining ingredients that don't quite go together. Though it sometimes feels like a dreamy (and nightmarish) journey through Carmy's psyche, it often lands with all the artfulness of a clip show, making what should be a stage-setting season premiere feel like a filler episode. Maybe Storer could stand to take his own advice: subtract."^[54]

Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast argued that the mood shift was, if nothing else, ambitious: "Given the bedlam The Bear is known for, launching Season 3 with a poignant, montage-filled tone poem is a ballsy swerve...to launch a new season in such a manner, with a depressive, hyper-emotional lilt, is a fascinating way for a series to meet a moment of so much hype and anticipation."^[55] Inverse's Alex Welch described it as the "best and most stylistically invigorating flashback episode in TV history...set to one monorhythmic piece of music...in just 35 minutes, it clears the table for what's to come, offers us a deeper look at what's come before, and sets up the themes of guilt, regret, and cyclical abuse that hang heavy over the entirety of The Bear season 3."^[56]

Screen Crush described it as an "episode-long jumble of flashbacks with no evident story arc and no major character developments...viewed on its own, 'Tomorrow' reminds the audience that The Bear is as much a show about a restaurant and its screwed-up staff as it is about artists and their art. Episodes like this one emphasize where creative inspiration comes from, and how a creator's work is inextricably linked to their life and their experiences. Its show-long flashback was probably a long time coming for Carmy, who has been pushing away all of these thoughts for a long time. Painful as it is for him to do it (and maybe as painful as it is for some in the audience to watch him do it) the process allows him to get to the root of some huge questions: Namely 'Why am I doing this?' and maybe even more importantly 'What do I want to say by doing it?'"^[57]

Award	Category	Nominee	Result	Ref.
ACE Eddie Awards	Best Edited Single-Camera Comedy Series	Joanna Naugle	Nominated	[58]
Directors Guild of America Awards	Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series	Christopher Storer	Nominated	[59]
Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series	Jeremy Allen White	Nominated	[60]
Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards	Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series	Joanna Naugle	Nominated	[61]

In 2024, The Hollywood Reporter placed "Tomorrow" first on a ranked list of 28 episodes produced to that point, calling it "the single greatest episode of The Bear, [which] is also its least accessible...You can't just sit someone down with 'Tomorrow' and expect them to get The Bear, the way I'd argue you could with 'Dogs' or even 'Review.' Those two episodes are the TV equivalent of an Italian beef sandwich; 'Tomorrow' is fine dining at its televised best."^[62] Screen Rant ranked "Tomorrow" 8th out of the 28 episodes produced through the end of season three, describing it as "one of the best-executed creative experiments of season three."^[63]

In 2025, Vulture ranked "Tomorrow" as 38th-best out of 38 episodes of The Bear, commenting, "It's all very beautiful and sensuous and interesting, but in terms of storytelling, it's a bit of a dud."^[64]

Esquire magazine listed "Tomorrow" at number 10 on its 2025 list of the top 10 best episodes from the first three seasons of The Bear, commending the installment for "impressively [avoiding] the usual fast-food origin story BS. Instead, Carmy's fragmented memories come together like a mosaic, a collection of recollections that unfold in order of feeling rather than their place in a chronological timeline."^[65]

• Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros – 2023 French-language documentary film; 240 minutes on Le Bois sans feuilles, a three-Michelin-star, family-owned restaurant in Ouches, Loire
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