The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri.Photo:Chuck Hodes/ FX on Hulu/ Everett
Chuck Hodes/ FX on Hulu/ Everett
Ayo Edebiriis taking a break from eggs.
The Bearstartells PEOPLE about the memorable scene when, as chef Sydney Adamu, she creates an omelet “that’s so beautiful and lovingly made — and so actually delicious.”
“I was making it a bunch. And then I was like, ‘I actually feel sick to my stomach because all this is is egg and butter.’ That is French [cuisine] for you,” she laughs in this week’s issue, on stands now.
The dish is twist on a traditional French omelet, with Boursin cheese in the middle and sour cream and onion chips on top, plus chives. “Literally heaven,” says Edebiri, 27.
And yes, that’s really her making the dish onscreen. As with most dishes seen onThe Bear, it’s a moment that required real practice and culinary skill from the actors playing chefs in a high-intensity Chicago kitchen.
Practice made perfect, admits Edebiri, but also created an aversion for her. “I made so many of them — just because making a French omelet is so hard — that eggs are tough for me right now!” she says.
Amanda Edwards/Getty
Even food with plenty of butter gives her pause these days. “It’s just so rich," she says. “That’s a bit tough for me, the rich stuff right now. But that [omelet] was genuinely delicious.”
In order to play her food-obsessed character convincingly, Edebiri tells PEOPLE she studied with real-life cooks at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) in Pasadena, Calif. She and herThe BearcostarJeremy Allen White, who plays chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, spent several weeks, “sunup to sundown, just cooking and learning the basics.”
That meant “learning how tolookas real as we could,” she continues. “We could never get to a level where, you know, we are Michelin star chefs. I mean, we would love to try — I worked in some Michelin star kitchens.”
She adds with a nonchalant hair flip: “I was told I could be hired, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White on “The Bear”.Matt Dinerstein/FX
The techniques Edebiri learned at ICE made it a formative experience for her as an actress. “That was actually incredible,” she remembers. “Being on your feet for that long, making yourself small in these really tight spaces, just always being on, was pretty invaluable. And yeah, it’s very exciting. I was like, I’m an actress that learns a skill for a job. How fun is that?”
The other perk of starring onThe Bear, of course, is eating its mouth-watering food. As Sydney, Edebiri consumes a variety of delicious-looking dishes throughout the show, particularly during a season two episode that sees her scouring Chicago restaurants for culinary inspiration. Often, she says, “The order of the day is, I’m eating. And so sometimes I’d be like, ‘I’m good on lunch!’”
One thing Edebiri, series creatorChristopher Storer, culinary producerCourtney Storer, and episode director Joanna Calo were “conscious of” was making sure to not waste food while filming. “The restaurants, you know, were still operating. So we’re paying them obviously, but they’re like, ‘We don’t wanna waste our food.’ So we were pretty strategic about it," says Edebiri.
“I feel like people are eating and they’re like, ‘Why are you eating? Shouldn’t you be…?’” She points, as though to a restaurant’s kitchen, and laughs.
source: people.com
