Foodies and TV show enthusiasts alike have most likely heard of Hulu comedy-drama series “The Bear.” Starring Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, the show follows a renowned chef as he returns home to run his family’s Italian beef restaurant.
Producer Christopher Storer was inspired to create the series based on his childhood friend Chris Zucchero’s family restaurant, Mr. Beef. “The Bear’s” pilot episode was filmed inside the restaurant.
Owner Zucchero grew up helping his father at Mr. Beef: first wiping down tables and handing out sodas, then learning how to slice beef and build sandwiches in his teens.
After becoming a co-owner in his mid-twenties, Zucchero has spent most days dishing up some of Chicago’s most popular Italian beef sandwiches. Some of Zucchero’s side gigs include catering to Hollywood actors and making a cameo on “The Bear.”
The Daily spoke to Zucchero to discuss Mr. Beef and the fame the small Italian beef stand has garnered with the advent of “The Bear.”
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
The Daily: Can you tell me about the history of Mr. Beef?
Zucchero: It started in 1979 by Joseph Zucchero, my father and his brother, Dominic Zucchero. There was a big Chicago magazine Italian beef article, and that kind of was the first article to really talk about Italian beef. It became a big thing in the city of Chicago, it was like the city finally recognized their sandwich or their root food. Since then, it’s been my father and my uncle and a group of employees over the years that would end up pretty much training me and teaching me everything over the next 42 years.
The history — my life really — is this: it’s going in there every day and slicing beef and slicing bread and making sandwiches and this and that, and then having strange occurrences, like “The Bear” or Jay Leno or all these other things that helped us along the way to get us to where we’re at. So it’s been an interesting ride of Italian beef, and then being in these huge media blitzes in the middle of it.
The Daily: Having grown up in the middle of it all, what does Chicago food culture mean to you?
It means actually sh– to me. If we’re going to talk about the restaurants that have been around for 40 years plus, it means the world to me – to be able to go into a place like Jimmy’s Red Hots or Superdawg, which is one of my favorite establishments in the entire universe. I’m not a big fan of the newer Chicago food industry.
The Daily: What’s so special about Italian beef?
Zucchero: There’s really four things that have to work for your sandwich to work. There has to be the right kind of bread, the meat has to be cooked and sliced the right kind of way. You need the right kind of sweet pepper. And then, last but not least, you need the right kind of giardiniera. My dad wanted everybody to enjoy the whole sandwich. He wanted you to enjoy the meat. He wanted you to enjoy the juice and the meat. He wanted it not to burn your mouth. He wanted it all to come together.
The Daily: Where does Mr. Beef fit into the Chicago food scene?
Zucchero: The universe has positioned us into several different situations where we’ve been able to bring Italian beef, not to just local Chicago, but what seems like the world by strange relationships with people who are somehow including us in their shed.
In the mid-1990s, my father had a relationship with him for quite some time before this, but Jay Leno, who was once the main-staying talk show host, brought Mr. Beef with him in a weird way. He talked about us when he came back to Chicago to do a week’s worth of shows in Chicago. We were on camera every day. So that catapulted us into this weird stratosphere.
We’re really not a local thing, and we never have been. I’ve never felt a very big camaraderie with the city. I’ve been very lucky because a lot of my customers have been people from all over the world.
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