Unfortunately, the cake isn't made out of bear
Well, it only took 190 years, but someone finally decided to make a cultural artifact about the city of Chicago. There’s a TV show called The Bear, and I don’t care if you watch it, but it’s about food and there is this cake in the first season. The cake is a plot device. You cannot eat it through the screen. But some guy consulted on the cake, and now he runs a café that is less than 500 feet from the front door of my house where he sells slides of Bear Cake for $7.50, and so you can come here and put the literal ontological cake from The Bear into your body. Three of your dollars go to the word “bear,” and the rest goes to the word “cake.” This is the ontology of contemporary economics.
The cake is a textbook thing, the kind of dessert that shaves a week off your life. Like all good cake, it is half frosting, and there are multiple kinds of frosting. You could make it yourself, but you’d look at how much butter was involved and die a little. So you make someone else do it. Sea salt is involved; it is more revelatory than it has any right to be.
People keep asking me if I go to the spots that have been featured in The Bear, and of course I do, because The Bear is our society’s first-ever cultural artifact about Chicago.
Margie’s Candies is featured in The Bear. My parents went on dates to Margie’s Candies. I go there every couple of weeks, since it’s near my gym and my therapist’s office.
Kasama is featured in The Bear. I’ve been three times, mostly because it’s so popular. Locals love Kasama. Suburbanites drive in for Kasama. People travel here for Kasama. Nobody is too good or not good enough for Kasama.
Chiu Quon is featured in The Bear. It is a multigenerational institution, holding the flame in ways that are hard to comprehend.
Materially every major north-side street food institution in Chicago is featured in The Bear: Gene & Jude’s, Pequod’s, Superdawg.
You get the idea.
Bear Cake is what happens when unreality collides with late capitalism. Nothing is pure anymore, it says, but you don’t care, because here’s some cake. In this way, you are finally having your cake & eating it, too.