In the first episode of season three of THE BEAR, there is an interesting food scene that hints at a bigger puzzle. An old scene shows Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) adding a blood-orange sauce to a dish instead of a fennel soubise. His boss, Joel McHale, insisted on the fennel soubise, so he made this change. But Carmy chose the blood-orange sauce instead. The dish is then given to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), who looks like he really enjoys it. There is an unspoken tie between the two chefs that starts here. They are linked by their love of food.
There is a big question, though: is Sydney really allergic to fennel? Fans have seen Sydney handle and work with fennel many times on the show so far. She has probably cooked with fennel and eaten the food she made. Is she trying to hide an allergy then?
Sydney makes a family meal at the Beef using things from the fridge, like a fennel bulb, in the first episode of the series. She cuts the fennel up and puts it in a salad. It seems likely that she would eat the salad, even though we don’t see her do so.
Sydney also tries the Beef’s beef sandwich at Carmy’s. There is no fennel in the sandwich itself, but it is often found in the Italian sauce (giardiniera) that goes with it. A recipe from Courtney Storer, the show’s cooking producer, says that the Beef’s sandwich does have fennel bulbs in it. This means that Sydney has probably eaten fennel.
Sydney makes a meal with étouffée stock and braised short ribs as well. The recipe doesn’t call for fennel bulb, but fennel seed is often used in Cajun spice for étouffée. On top of that, fennel seed is usually added to the Beef sausage and peppers sandwich. Sydney makes Marcus (Lionel Boyce) dinner, which is Chilean sea bass with stewed tomatoes, after she leaves the Beef. One of the flavors in the original recipe for this dish is fennel.
Sydney’s food tour of Chicago makes things even more complicated. She gets mushroom adobo at Kasama instead of pork adobo, which has fennel in it. She might be trying to avoid fennel on purpose if she made this choice.
Sydney makes a dish with fennel pollen, fennel purée, and a fennel salad in another show. It’s clear that she works with and cooks with fennel a lot. What would make Sydney say she is allergic to fennel? There are a few possible reasons for this:
For the sake of the story, the show may have needed a reason for Carmy to make Sydney a special dish, and an allergy is a good one. Because both fennel and blood oranges were in season at the same time, they were easy to use in the dish and as a replacement.
Sydney may have been trying the restaurant’s ability to handle substitution requests, even though chefs don’t usually act this way.
Underreported Allergy: Sydney may really have a fennel allergy that she hasn’t told her coworkers about, possibly because she’s afraid of being judged or embarrassed. She might have to go through pain to work with Carmy and the unique products at the Beef.
In season three, episode seven, Sydney’s medicine cabinet is shown to have bottles of Pepto-Bismol and a generic version of it. This supports the third idea that she might be having stomach problems, possibly because she is allergic to fennel.
In the end, no one knows what Sydney’s relationship with fennel is. This part of the story gives her character and her relationship with Carmy more meaning, even if she doesn’t really have an allergy.
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