How ‘The Bear’—and “Yes, Chef”—Turned Chefs Into the Sex Symbols They Always Were

When Luis Fayad added a job title—Executive Chef—to his Hinge and Tinder profiles, his dating game skyrocketed. Once “out” as a chef on the apps, he started matching with plenty of women who asked him to cook for them on first dates and let them into his “world.” Being a chef in the dating pool, it seemed, boosted his game more than any photo or fun fact ever had.

After Season 1 of The Bear premiered in 2022, Fayad praised the show for “making it sexy to fuck chefs,” lauding it on Twitter as one of “the real heroes of my ho phase.” And as the show grew in popularity, so too did Fayad (“It came out at a really perfect time because I had just gotten divorced,” he says). What romantic prospects had once seen as roughneck, blue-collar work was suddenly an art—a passion—and they wanted to be a part of it. “People just think creativity and authenticity are sexy,” Fayad says. “Nowadays, especially, when everything is fake. [Cooking] is a way to give someone actual nourishment.”

Fayad is not the only one who’s been hit by this wave of chef sex appeal. I am pleased/sorry to inform you that “Yes, Chef”-ing is all the rage these days, and not even the boxed ramen loyalists are immune to its horniness. If terms like “YOLO” and “swag” can have their moments in the sun, then it’s understandable—and maybe even a good sign—that we as a society have moved on to sexually-undertoned chef-speak as a means of cultural bonding. Whether a friend replies “Yes, Chef” to your dinner invite or a hot date says “Yes, Chef” about your new outfit, the phrase presents endless opportunities for ribbing, flirting, and maybe even real romance.

The phrase first blew up (among us common, non-foodie folk) when FX’s The Bear hit TV screens, introducing the world to Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, the gourmet-chef-turned-Chicago-sandwich-shop-owner played by short king Jeremy Allen White. Carmy, who has worked at some of the most elite restaurants in the country, introduces his new ragtag kitchen team to an array of industry jargon he says will make them more legitimate and efficient: “Heard, Chef,” “Corner,” “All day,” “86,” and the list goes on.

However, none of these quite struck a chord in pop culture like “Yes, Chef,” which immediately fell into the internet’s lexicon after The Bear got big. Not only is it the show’s most-used phrase, but it’s also Jeremy Allen White’s best-delivered: cried out with the raw anger possible only in a man who’s both grieving his brother and trying to make Italian beef sophisticated. From TikTok fan edits to magazine covers to New Yorker cartoons, the phrase is on everyone’s lips, occupying that pop-culture sweet spot previously filled by legendary heavy hitters like “Damn, Daniel” and “Cash me outside, howbow dah?”

While The Bear watchers have adopted “Yes, Chef” as a fun affirmative to throw into conversations, it has also come to denote the collective thirst now felt toward Jeremy Allen White. (One Twitter user spoke for the masses when she said, “need to have sex with jeremy allen white so i can moan ‘yes chef’.) Though there’s no doubt that White’s sex appeal has helped fuel the “Yes, Chef” craze (the man is a Roman cherub meets wrestling Von Erich brother, after all), he alone did not make chefs erotically appealing. Instead, he merely helped us see a truth that was hiding in plain sight: Chefs are really, really sexy despite—or maybe because of—the grease stains.

As White himself said in an interview, “Chefs are hot … they’re cool as shit. There’s something attractive about anybody who’s incredibly gifted at any skill … determination is also incredibly attractive.” In White’s subsequent Actors on Actors interview with Jennifer Coolidge, she expanded on this notion, explaining that she “always fell in love with the angry chefs” and noting, “I just like the way they throw the food down.” Same, Jennifer. Same.

Perhaps many of us have always had a thing for cooks; White and his signature “Yes, Chef” simply provided the cultural cornerstone to help us finally realize it. Tembi Locke explored the possible reasons for our deep-rooted chef thirst in her 2019 memoir, From Scratch, suggesting that, by feeding us, cooks provide unique feelings of comfort and nurture.

“Chefs have this commanding way that feels full of strength and power and dynamism,” Locke says. “It’s very sexy, there’s a kinetic energy to what’s happening. Literally and metaphorically, they’re handling a lot of plates in the air, and that’s very interesting and compelling to watch.”

Similarly, in a classic Psychology Today article titled “The Biology of Attraction,” biological anthropologist Helen E. Fisher explored the innate link between food and desirability. “Around the world men have given women presents prior to lovemaking,” Fisher wrote. “A fish, a piece of meat, sweets and beer are among the delicacies men have invented as offerings.”

When someone has the ability to feed us—and feed us well—we automatically feel more intimate toward them. As one lustful Twitter user put it, quite aptly, “Chefs are hot because they’re like chemists who can use their magic to make your tummy happy.” In fact, studies have shown that the act of feeding is more significant than most other romantic gestures and is one of the strongest signs of intimacy between two individuals.

The romantic feelings evoked by cooking really hit home for Akwaeke Emezi, author of the 2022 chef-centric romance novel, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty. In an interview with Bon Appétit, they explained that, when brainstorming a romantic profession for their protagonist, chef was the clear frontrunner. “I was like, what is the sexiest [artist] I can think of?’ And the answer was, he should obviously be a chef,” Emezi said. “Someone who can take something that is fundamental to being alive and then turn it into art.”

Olivia Harrington, a pastry chef at Little Sparrow Atlanta, agrees that the romantic appeal of cooks is rooted largely in their artisanship, “It’s the grittiness and the creativity,” she says. “Once you get in the higher ranks of the brigade system, especially, you have that creative control; you’re executing a vision.”

For Harrington and so many other chefs, cooking is both a passion and an endless project; even when she’s not working in her restaurant, she’s at home trying out new recipes and tinkering with old ones to get them just right. There’s something inherently attractive in this quest for perfection—something we can’t help but admire in people (not just chefs, but anyone) who dive headfirst into a craft and devote their lives to it. It’s the same reason we lust after the poet who’s up writing at three in the morning, or the singer who refuses to take a night off. Future unknowingly captured the chef ethos when he said, “You done fell in love with a bad guy; I don’t compromise my passion.”

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Sure, having the angelic blonde curls and soul-searching blue eyes of Jeremy Allen White definitely helps, but making a mean mushroom and goat cheese risotto is, in itself, a sensual act. Even watching someone cook a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese can cast them in a new light or, at the very least, leave you with a delightful bowl of atomic orange goodness and a confusing wave of fondness for them.

“The lust for chefs is definitely not a new thing,” says Alyssa Shelasky, sex writer, producer, and author ofApron Anxiety: My Messy Affairs In and Out of the Kitchen. Shelasky has, in fact, dated her fair share of cooks over the years (“I bagged a chef and proceeded to date another chef who was his arch nemesis,” she admits). She describes them as the “ultimate bad boys”—wounded artists who escape from the chaos of their lives within the order of a well-stocked prep kitchen. “Because they’re never home; they’re kind of mysterious; you can’t get a hold of them,” Shelasky says. “It’s very basic and primal, in that we want what we can’t have. You never fully have a chef, and it keeps you aching for more.”

No one demonstrates this chaotic chef energy better than Carmy, who has the delightfully odd habit of storing vintage denim in his oven and completely fumbles the bag with the girl of his dreams. “He’s the perfect example of that tender, damaged, but ultimately sweet person we lose our minds over,” says Shelasky, noting that Carmy, like most artisans, toes the ever-so-appealing line between genius and asshole. “On the one hand they’re flakey and hard to pin down, but yet at work they’re so devoted,” she says.

As Shelasky alludes to, the seductiveness of cooking captured by The Bear has always been right under our noses; “Yes, Chef” has just allowed us to finally explore it on a meaningful level (meaningful defined as millennial coworkers saying it around the office and thirsty cooking TikToks popping up on everyone’s For You pages). After all, shows like Top Chef certainly did their part to elevate the profession into something cooler and edgier over the years, while Gordon Ramsay awakened many to the electricity of the kitchen by, one, yelling, and, two, being British.

Also, let us not forget that long before The Bear, we had Anthony. Fucking. Bourdain: hot chef and adventurous eater extraordinaire. If there’s any explanation as to why White’s depiction of Carmy, in particular, has touched such a nerve and signaled this global chorus of “Yes, Chef,” it probably harkens back to why we fell for Bourdain’s rockstar lifestyle many moons ago.

Everything about Bourdain—his irreverence, his unapologetic nature, his knack for uniting people through food—epitomizes what people love about both Carmy and about chefs in general. As spirits journalist Dave Infante wrote shortly after Bourdain’s tragic passing in 2018, “[Bourdain had] limitless curiosity for our world, skepticism of pretense, and an insatiable appetite. He wasn’t in our wheelhouse. We were in his, and glad to be there.” A tweet from August 2022—shortly after The Bear’s first season debuted—further spoke to Bourdain’s enduring appeal (albeit, a little less poignantly): “Everyone thinks chefs are hot now and I’m just like why do ya’ll think I love the food network so much? Or have ya’ll never watched an episode of any Anthony Bourdain show?” If all it took was a fictional hot chef to further cement the sexiness of a real one, so be it. Visibility is still visibility.

The Bear even paid homage to a real-life hot chef, Curtis Duffy, in its second season, basing its luxe establishment in the episode “Forks” on Duffy’s Michelin-starred restaurant, Ever. Duffy, with his growing empire of Chicago eateries and salt-and-pepper hair, is, I can only assume, who Carmy dreams about in the approximately four hours he sleeps each night. He’s the rare example of a chef who’s both rough around the edges (re: has tattoos) but also has his shit together; a man who could mosh at a punk show then immediately button up his apron to make a stunning crème brûlée.

Duffy sits firmly on what Shelasky terms the “otherworldly” end of the chef spectrum (“They live on the planet that is their restaurant,” she muses), and one need look no further than Ever’s menu—which looks like what martians eat on vacation—for proof. If cooking is indeed an art, then Duffy is the Duchamp of fine dining, churning out dishes that boggle the eyes as much as the taste buds.

Fayad, for one, is an unapologetic fan of all “Yes, Chef” memes. “Oh, like the ‘yes, daddy’ parodies?” he asked, after I brought them up in our interview. “Those are incredible. I love those so much.” He also welcomes the chance to show off his skills for his dates and answer any questions the newly chef-curious may have about the profession. Fayad notes that the only faux pas one can make when dating a chef is to ask them their favorite dish, which he equates to asking someone to pick a favorite child. “It’s by far my most hated question,” he says, with an audible shiver (take notes, chef-hunters).

With The Bear’s third season premiering this week, we may be in for a new wave of chef love. Fayad and Harrington are fans of the show and both say they’ll be watching, noting its realism compared to other recent portrayals of kitchen life. “It’s honestly a great representation of the restaurant industry, and it’s cool to watch a show tackle the issues that they don’t tackle in other movies and shows,” says Fayad. Harrington maintains that, if anything, it presents a toned-down version of the pent-up tension in a professional kitchen. (She also notes that The Bear fails to delve into the commonplace back-of-house hookup culture in most restaurants.)

Whether you tune in to see just how badly Carmy ruins his personal life while perfecting his roast beef, or opt to embrace kitchen lingo as a part of your am-I-still-saying-this-ironically? vocabulary, there are plenty of ways to make this a hot chef summer. “I can still sort of close my eyes and fantasize about dating chefs,” Shelasky reveals. “I don’t think I’ll ever really forget what that was like.” And why should she? The world will be a better place if we can all accept that food is erotic and chaotic people are alluring (and also embrace the delightful ridiculousness of replying to any and everything, “Yes, Chef”).

Holyn Thigpen is an arts and culture writer based in Brooklyn. She holds an MA in English from Trinity College Dublin and spends her free time googling Nicolas Cage.