Sydney Adamu

**Sydney "Syd" Adamu** is a main character in the comedy drama series ***The Bear***. She is a sous-chef at The Original Beef of Chicagoland, and helps Carmy Berzatto fix the restaurant. She is portrayed by Ayo Edebiri.

## Background

Sydney seems to have been a fan of cooking from a young age and studied at the Culinary Institute of America. When she was a kid, her father's favorite place to eat was 'The Beef' and they would eat there every Sunday. Sydney enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and paid her way through school by working as a driver for the United Parcel Service.

At some point after attending the CIA, Sydney opened her own catering business called 'Sheridan Road', which she operated out of her garage. Sheridan Road failed for a number of reasons, including that it got 'too big too fast', according to Sydney.

Her formal training, work in fine dining, and experience as a business owner give her a level of polish and understanding that Carmy appreciates and can relate to. The crew of "The Beef" initially distrust Sydney, due to her fine dining background, young age, and ambitious vision for the restaurant. She becomes Carmy's second in command in the kitchen and the de facto manager due to her business experience and her shared fine dining background.

## Personality

Sydney is ambitious, intelligent and dedicated to her craft. She cares about creating a work environment which is respectful, and dreams of revolutionizing the back kitchen into non-abusive, encouraging environments. This is reflected in how she treats her crew and encourages them to adjust to new things and reach their full potential. According to past employers, she is 'incredibly smart and incredibly talented' as well as 'incredibly impatient and incredibly green.'

She is passionate about cooking and very hard-working. She excels in the kitchen, at organization, is always open to and pushing for change, and her strength is in adapting quickly in crises, often coming up with ingenious solutions.

In Season 1, she often feels like a fish out of water with the rest of the staff, who are older, lack formal training, and have long-established ties, but is determined to make it work if it means working with Carmy and transforming the kitchen into a professional, non-abusive work environment.

## Physical Description

Sydney is a Nigerian-American woman. She has dark brown skin, black hair, and brown eyes. She usually keeps her hair braided into box braids and tied back with a kerchief and different colored scarves at the restaurant.

## Throughout the Series

### Season 1

Sydney Adamu is a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef and a Chicago native. She is initially hired by Carmy to stage at The Original Beef of Chicagoland, a rundown restaurant that was her father's favorite. Sydney has suffered a setback with the failure of her catering company and moved back in with her father. Upon her first meeting with Carmy, he reviews her resume. He is impressed and simultaneously puzzled at why she chose to work at The Beef with her excellent background. She tells Carmy she applied for the position because it was her father's favorite when she was a child. She also lets Carmy know that she is aware of his accomplishments and in turn asks why he is at the restaurant. His response is "makin' sandwiches."

As an outsider with a culinary education and fine dining background, Sydney is initially rejected by the established staff of The Beef and struggles with trying to understand them. She does not get along with Tina Marrero at first, who hazes Sydney with the help of the rest of the crew. All of them dislike the change Sydney represents, especially with Sydney's constant desire to implement new and improved ways of doing things.

Sydney's business and administrative acumen is revealed when she puts together a business plan proposal for Carmy. With the plan, she hopes to show that, with certain changes, there could be an improvement with the restaurant's business operations and also be sufficient budget to hire and pay her as an employee, not just to stage. Carmy eventually hires her and then dumps all of the administrative and managerial duties he loathes onto her. He often sets her with big tasks, and then leaves her with little support, which she both resents and thrives on.

Sydney is thrown into the deep end solo when Carmy tells her to reorganize the kitchen staff as a formal Escoffier kitchen brigade and retrain them to a high level of cleanliness and professionalism. He appoints her as the sous-chef. Considering she is viewed as an outsider and too young to understand what she is doing, without Carmy's support, she feels abandoned and drowning as she tries to accomplish it. Sydney rises to the challenges and raises her concerns to Carmy, who recognizes his poor actions and lack of support.

Sydney is able to establish methods and processes which make the kitchen of The Bear smoother and more efficient than it has ever been. Sydney also manages to form bonds with the staff and begins to earn their respect as they come to see past her age to her genuine skills, which she is happy to share with them.

Sydney often works alongside Carmy to create a new dinner menus with the aim of increasing profits. However, there are challenges along the way, including a poor health inspection rating, a toilet backup, and a blown fuse that disrupt the restaurant's operations. Sydney shows resourcefulness by organizing an outdoor lunch service using a makeshift barbecue setup to keep the business running. Another show of resourcefulness is when she deescalates a gang fight outside the restaurant doors.

Though her relationship with Tina and her subordinates on the kitchen crew improves dramatically, her relationship with Richie becomes increasingly antagonistic with every new change and update she and Carmy push through. Richie feels threatened by her position next to Carmy and wounded that Sydney does not respect the 'history and tradition of The Beef' and its community, or recognize the work he did in keeping the place going through Covid and immediately after Michael's death. Sydney in turn views Richie as stuck, disrespectful, and backwards; a loud obstacle to her vision of The Beef as a modern and professional establishment.

Sydney develops a risotto dish as a pet project. Carmy rejects it, telling her it isn't ready yet and cannot be served on the dinner menu. Sydney becomes fixated on perfecting the risotto. Carmy tells her that her latest version is "tremendous", yet still cannot be offered on the dinner menu. Sydney, defeated, serves the dish to a customer.

The customer, it turns out, is a famous food critic. He writes a glowing review of The Beef, and raves about the risotto. Carmy is peeved, because he explicitly told Sydney the dish wasn't ready. Richie also rags on Sydney with suspicion, believing she knew the customer was a critic and gave him her dish with ulterior motives. Carmy backs Sydney up telling Richie that the dish was served to the critic without knowing he was a critic. Sydney asks Carmy if everything is okay, and he claims it is, despite his displeasure over the situation.

Sydney's latest innovation is to use ordering tablets and accept online to go orders. Sydney makes an error by leaving the preorder option on, and the tiny restaurant is flooded with hundreds upon hundreds of to-go orders, all due for pick up shortly and even more coming in every second. In person, one customer asks for the famous risotto, which is not on the menu.

Carmy explodes at the crew. He screams at Sydney and demands she get out of the way with expletives and crude language. She engages in a fight with Richie, who had crudely asked if she blew the food critic to get the glowing review, and who also never wanted the tablet system. Sydney says some rude things about him, including a snipe at his parenting skills, and Richie says she is being very mean and calls her a curse word. At some point, Richie walks backward in the kitchen, and accidentally backs into a knife held by Sydney. Sydney, still thinking about Carmy's behavior toward her, resigns amidst the chaos.

With her gone, Carmy flounders at the managerial tasks he must take up again and struggles to admit she's gone when asked by Tina.

Sydney spends this time in her father's apartment, making dishes and hanging out with Marcus, who had also walked out amidst the chaos. Sydney admits to Marcus that the best dish she ever had was Carmy's. Carmy later texts her an apology, along with what her risotto was missing and that her final check is waiting. Sydney returns to the restaurant to find the crew opening tomato cans and uncovering a trove of hidden cash. Carmy suggests a new restaurant to her, and Sydney agrees and rejoins the crew.

### Season 2

Sydney is actively involved in the development of The Bear restaurant. Together with Carmy, she works on creating the menu and brings Natalie on board as the project manager for renovations. Sydney takes on the role of chef de cuisine, and she also selects Tina as her sous-chef. She sends Tina and Ebra to culinary school to enhance their skills, and Marcus to Copenhagen to stage.

Sydney's relationship with her father is explored more. She and her father hold a birthday dinner at a diner for her mom, who passed away from Lupus when Sydney was 4. Her father shares stories about her mother, leaving Sydney wistful. Sydney shares the plans The Bear is undergoing, including a pause to her wages so the rest of the team can get paid. Her father is concerned, and Sydney tries to reassure him.

She and Carmy work on the menu at Carmy's apartment and learn more about each other. Sydney shares to Carmy that Sheridan Road's final gig was for a fundraiser for a 'mean' lady who demanded fresh pasta. In preparation, Sydney prepped a Ragu for 72 hours to go with the pasta, but her pasta had dried up by the time she arrived. As a result, she ended up serving the Ragu with King's Hawaiian bread rolls instead. Despite tasting good, this was presumably not well received by the client and facilitated the failure of Sheridan Road, prompting her to move back in with her father.

She and Carmy face challenges in developing the menu due to their broken palates. Carmy suggests they go on a palate cleanser, but ends up flaking out. Sydney visits multiple restaurants alone around the city to sample dishes, gathering inspiration and receiving feedback from old colleagues. She returns to The Bear at the end of the day, and is upset upon learning that Carmy has been making decisions without consulting her after he missed out on the palate cleanser.

As the opening of The Bear approaches, Sydney shoulders a bulk of the work and continues to work on the menu with Tina's help, and with Carmy increasingly ignoring some of his responsibilities. Sydney asks for more of Carmy's focus and he agrees. Despite these challenges, Sydney remains committed to her role in the restaurant and prepares for the soft opening.

During the soft opening, Sydney runs the expo and feels the pressure to succeed. Issues arise, such as running out of forks and Carmy getting trapped in the walk-in fridge. However, she successfully handles the situation, with the help of Richie and the rest of the crew. Sydney ends up vomiting out back after handling the situation. She feels fulfilled after accomplishing the soft opening, and hearing words of encouragement from her father.

## Relationships

### Carmy

Sydney and Carmy are friends and partners in the new restaurant ’The Bear.' They have a great friendship and tease each other often. Carmy opened up to Sydney about his brother being an addict. Sydney responded with a joke which made Carmy laugh. Sydney appeared to be appreciative of his accomplishments when they first meet in episode 1. Their friendship went through significant turmoil over the first season, mainly due to an increasingly stressful work environment, and their disagreements on how best to improve the restaurant. In Review, Carmy unleashes a particularly rude outburst on her and Marcus, causing Sydney to quit the restaurant, admitting that while he was a "great chef", he was also a "piece of s\*\*t". The two ultimately reconcile after Carmy apologizes to her in the finale, and Sydney returns. At the end of the season, Carmy proposes a business partnership. Sydney gladly accepts.

Sydney and Carmy become much better friends during the second season as they prepare for the opening of the new restaurant in three months and work on the menu together. Despite this, they occasionally clash over their differences in opinion and Carmy's divided attention, the latter of which is exacerbated by his new relationship with Claire. Sydney is upset when he flakes out on the palate cleanser he suggested they do together, doesn't consult her when they knocked down the walls of The Beef, and gains input from Claire on the menu they were supposed to be working on together. He also does not call the fridge guy to fix the walk-in, despite multiple reminders. She asks for more of his focus, and he agrees.

Despite their differences, the two are always able to reconcile whenever they clash by making use of a special hand sign that means "I'm sorry", which instantly diffuses any argument they are having. Over the course of the season, they learn much more about each other's pasts, fears, insecurities, and ambitions. In Omlette, the two chefs talk while fixing a table, and Sydney confides in him about her fears that she will mess up on their opening night, but Carmy tells her that he will "not let [her]". They admit to each other they wouldn't want to do it [the restaurant] without the other and that they make each other better at this. He then gifts her with a custom-made Thom Browne chef's uniform with her initials on it (remembering when Sydney stated she would love to have one in a conversation they had near the beginning of the season) and assures her that she is "not alone", to which Sydney responds, "Neither are you." Sydney runs the expo on Friends and Family opening night. Carmy defends her from Marcus after the latter yells at her and encourages her to "just keep going'. She mentions feeling swamped at the expo and asks Carmy if he wants to switch. Carmy assures her she is doing fine. As things become more hectic over the course of the night, he ends up angrily yelling at her over cold fishes, but she is able the calm him down and they apologize to each other. With a successful opening night, and although Carmy got stuck in the walk-in, the two of them presumably end the season on reasonably good terms.

### Marcus

Sydney and Marcus are friends and co-workers. Upon first joining The Beef, Sydney was teased by all of the staff for being the new girl, but Marcus still tried to be nice to her when he could. At one point, they asked Marcus to hide one of Sydney's dishes, and while it was funny to Marcus, this greatly annoyed Sydney. She accidentally spills a bucket of stock and Marcus helps Sydney clean up the mess, encouraging her to "keep going," knowing she was stressed from the poor treatment by the crew. Over the remainder of the first season, the two become fast friends, bonding over Marcus' interest in baking and Sydney motivating him as a mentor. She invites him over to eat after they both quit the restaurant during the ordering crisis and bond over the experience. Sydney tells Marcus that she tried his donut from off the floor. She also admits to Marcus the best meal she ever had was made by Carmy. Both eventually return to Beef in the finale.

In the second season, Sydney and Marcus grow closer as they all prepare for the opening of 'The Bear', and Marcus slowly begins to develop feelings for her, while Sydney does not reciprocate those feelings. He confides in Sydney his worries about his mother, and it's Sydney who makes the suggestion that Marcus travels to Copenhagen in order to come up with new desserts for the menu, as well as take his mind off of things. During his trip, she facetimes him, consoling him about his mother and casually tells him she misses him, resulting in Marcus realizing that he has feelings for her. Upon his return, he unveils four new desserts to her and Carmy, and names one of them "Sydney's doughnut", after her. Despite being highly proud of Marcus, their relationship starts to become awkward when Marcus asks her out and she awkwardly declines. This throws Sydney off her game as he asked her out on the day of their soft open. Sydney focuses on getting the dishes out during the opening, which causes Marcus to feel ignored and results in him eventually yelling at her in frustration, shocking her. Despite the tension between them, they along with everyone else, are able to come together to make sure all orders are served on time after Carmy gets locked in the fridge. Afterward, Marcus apologizes, and the two of them bond over Marcus' revelation that he found Josh smoking crack in the alley.

### Emmanuel

Emmanuel Adamu is Sydney's father. He is unseen in the first season and fully shown in the second season. Sydney and Emmanuel appear to have a good relationship, although they are sometimes at odds as her father is concerned about her career at The Bear, due to her forgoing a salary and taking on a huge responsibility. At one point, he mentions her cousin Monty always has a job for her at Boeing and that he reads about restaurants closing in the papers. He reassures her he loves her very much and doesn't want her to feel like she has to make everything "the thing." Despite his concerns over The Bear and the fear of Sydney possibly putting too much of her into "the thing," he eventually comes around in the finale after experiencing The Bear and tasting the food. He is proud of Sydney and encourages her about "the thing." Emmanuel is shown to still love her mother, years after her death. He regales Sydney with stories about her mother, which often makes her wistful.

### Richie

Sydney and Richie initially had a very antagonistic relationship. He berates her all season until she finally snaps back at him in Review. She doesn't understand his purpose or place in the restaurant, and does not like his caustic, brash attitude. Richie, in turn, feels that Sydney has little respect for his position as part of Carmy's family, and that she is trying to ruin something he holds very precious. Over season one, their relationship degrades with every change Sydney implements, and culminates in the season one finale when they trade insults and she accidentally stabs him with a kitchen knife. Despite their animosity towards each other, Sydney appears genuinely shocked and remorseful when she accidentally stabs him, and it may have been the final straw to cause her to quit the restaurant. Sydney and Richie do not talk to each other for more of the finale, but when she finally returns, he does not bring up the stabbing and simply tells her to grab a can opener.

Their relationship improves considerably during the second season. In the first half of the season, the two of them continue to occasionally butt heads, although Richie makes a conscious effort to not yell at her by adopting breathing techniques and the stabbing is not brought up. ￼ Upon returning from staging at a restaurant, the two of them are much friendlier towards each other, owing to Richie's vastly improved attitude and competency, and Sydney even complements his new suit. The two develop an amicable relationship of trust and respect, illustrated by Richie addressing her as "Chef Sydney" and Sydney trusting him to run expo when Carmy is trapped in the fridge.

### Tina

Sydney and Tina are co-workers and friends. Upon Sydney first joining the Beef, the existing members of the staff mainly showed skepticism towards both her and Carmy and treated them as outsiders. Chief amongst them was Tina, who would constantly undermine Sydney's authority and disregard her advice. Despite this, Sydney does not get discouraged; in one instance, after Tina accidentally messes up a dish she was preparing, Sydney, having anticipated this, immediately replaces it with her own, earning her respect. Later, Tina gives a pot of soup to Sydney that she has been frustrated over, but although she assumed that Sydney would insult her dish. To her surprise, however, Sydney approved of it, and Tina appreciated this. Hereafter, Tina became much friendlier towards Sydney. In Review, amidst a chaotic morning, Tina attempted to calm Sydney down when she was angry, but to no avail.

By the second season, as everyone began to prepare for the opening of the Bear, Sydney asked Tina if she would be her sous chef, which Tina was overjoyed by. Tina would spend most of the rest of the season training and preparing to be Sydney's sous chef. On opening night, however, the two of them briefly butt heads when, in one instance, Sydney asks her to redo a dish she had just prepared because the cook was apparently wrong, which Tina disagreed with. Later, after witnessing Carmy yell at Sydney (followed by a reconciliation), the two of them quickly apologize to each other. After a successful opening night, the two of them seem to end the season on good terms. ￼

## Quotes

* *"Why can't we put everything that we have into everything that we can?"* - Sydney in "Omelette"

## Trivia

* Sydney studied at the Culinary Institute of America.
* Prior to the series, Sydney ran her own catering business called ‘Sheridan Road.’
* The tagline of Sydney's resume is 'Chef, foodie, a curious mind.'
* Prior to working at the Beef, Sydney worked at Alinea, Smoque BBQ, and Avec Restaurant.
* She worked at UPS as a driver to pay her way through culinary school.
* She owns a Chicago Bulls T-shirt.
* She has a small 'Three of Swords' tattoo on her back shoulder.