Bernardo Mateus has called on everyone to give their ‘compliments to the chef’ on 2 August. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Season 4 of The Bear has just landed with another searingly accurate depiction of what it’s like to work in hospitality.
If you’ve never watched the series, it follows Carmy Berzatto, a fine-dining chef who returns to his late brother’s humble sandwich shop in Chicago. What unfolds is a layered, sometimes frantic, often beautiful portrait of restaurant life in all its glory and grief.
Across its four seasons, The Bear has offered one of the most honest portrayals of hospitality ever shown on screen. It captures the high stakes of dinner service, the pressure and the emotional toll, especially in this latest season, where we see the team at The Bear clinging to a last Hail Mary to save their restaurant.
And for many chef-owners in Canberra, that’s not drama. It’s Tuesday.
Many of Canberra’s surviving hospitality businesses are the work of chef-owners. Often, these dreamers are passionate and creative chefs who have left secure jobs working for others to pursue something deeply personal.
Not driven by money (no one opens a restaurant hoping to become a millionaire), they invest everything – financially, emotionally and physically – to bring their vision to life.
A vision of sharing the food they love, the flavours that shaped them, and the memories tied to every dish.
Their hope? That those meals might leave a lasting mark on someone else, the way someone else’s once did for them.
As Bernard Lee, chef and owner of Bunny Beans Café in Greenway, puts it: “I opened my café because I wanted people to feel what great food has always given me: comfort, joy, and a sense of home. I want my food to be the reason someone smiles every day!”
But dreams like this get tested. And lately, they’re being pushed to their limits.
Operational costs continue to rise (rent, produce, insurance, electricity), climbing unrelentingly. The talent pool is small and stretched thin, making it harder to build and retain reliable teams.
Customers, too, are dining out less often, as the rising cost of living has turned a casual meal out into something that feels indulgent.
For chef-owners, that means doing more with less. Smaller teams. Slimmer margins. Longer days. It means stepping into every role – not just head chef, but cleaner, bookkeeper, roster manager, and front-of-house lead – just to keep the lights on.
There’s no time to rest, rarely time to plan, and almost never time to step back and breathe.
On top of everything else, chef-owners are navigating a shift in how people engage with food. In the age of TikTok, attention spans are short, trends move fast, and once a venue has been tried and posted about, it’s often replaced by the next.
This culture of constant discovery has made loyalty harder to earn and nearly impossible to rely on.
Even a brilliant meal might only buy you one visit. For chef-owners trying to build something lasting, that creates an impossible pressure.
The work has always been challenging, but now it’s complex and fragile. One quiet weekend can undo a month’s progress, and one unexpected bill can tip things over the edge.
So what can we do?
First, we need to support local and mean it! The message has been widely promoted, but it’s not always translating to action. Not every hashtag turns into a booking.
There are venues across Canberra that are doing everything right, offering thoughtful food, warm service, and a genuine sense of hospitality, yet still struggle to fill seats.
If there’s a place you love, go back, become a regular, tell your friends and post about it. Loyalty doesn’t need to be loud to be powerful.
Second, we need to understand the weight of our words. Online reviews and social media posts have given customers a stronger voice, and in many ways, that has helped raise standards. However, it has also created an uneven playing field. A single negative comment, even when well-intentioned, can affect bookings, morale and livelihoods.
That’s not to say people shouldn’t speak honestly, but we should speak with care.
And maybe there’s something else we can do. A gesture that doesn’t cost a thing but can mean the world to someone who’s still turning up, apron on, trying to make it all work.
Let’s start a movement. A kindness movement! Let’s call it Compliments to the Chef Day.
On Saturday, 2 August, we’re inviting everyone to book a table at a local venue. Go out to eat, enjoy the experience, and no matter how it went, whether it blew your mind or just filled your stomach, send your compliments to the chef. Thank them for their work, for showing up, and for still caring, because this is a group of people who rarely ask for praise but deeply deserve it.
Let’s remind the people who feed us that what they do matters, because before we root for Carmy and the team at The Bear to save their restaurant, we should support our neighbours.
Bernardo Mateus has more than 15 years’ experience in the hospitality industry and teaches courses on hospitality leadership, event management and guest service management at the Canberra Institute of Technology.
