‘The Bear’ Is Back. Here’s Every Wirecutter Pick We’ve Spotted in Carmy’s Kitchen.

Designed in the 1930s, the Bialetti Moka Express is an Art Deco classic. It also happens to produce an excellent cup of coffee. It uses pressure to force water through the coffee grounds in a process similar to making espresso. The coffee is rich and smooth, with a touch of acidity. It’s a staple in Italian-American households, which is why a Bialetti coffee maker can be spotted in the Berzatto family kitchen during the second season’s flashback Christmas episode.

Speaking of coffee, Carmy has a Wirecutter-approved coffee setup. The Technivorm Moccamaster KBGV Select is an elegant coffee maker that comes in more than 20 colors, from the classic silver to pistachio green to poppy orange. It delivers pour-over-quality coffee in a sleek package that looks better than a drip coffee maker should. We also love the Moccamaster KBT, one of our top-pick coffee makers, which has a thermal carafe and does away with the hot plate to keep your coffee from getting scorched.

Carmy also appears to have our top-pick grinder, the Baratza Encore. The Encore has crushed the competition for years in our tests. It has a smallish footprint and a durable and easy-to-clean build, and it delivers an impressively consistent, uniform grind. There isn’t a better grinder for a man who loves precision in the kitchen.

While the mandoline used in The Bear is the ubiquitous seafoam-green model, we’re fans of Benriner’s updated, slightly larger Super Benriner mandoline. It has a rubber foot that keeps it in place over a cutting board or a bowl, and it has a comfortable handle—both of which are important when you’re dealing with a kitchen tool that nearly invites accidents. We don’t recommend shaving down small nubs of shallots, as depicted on the show. But either way, the Benriner mandoline comes with a simple guard to keep your fingers safe.

With its wide head and long handle, Rubbermaid’s commercial spatula is excellent for working large batches. It’s dishwasher safe, and its flexible head is less likely to become nicked over time than those of other silicone spatulas. This exact model can be found in commercial kitchens and bakeries, and Marcus’s pastry station wouldn’t be complete without it.

A bench scraper is a sleeper hit among kitchen tools. It’s versatile, and it can work well for everything from folding dough to dividing portions to scooping up ingredients to carrying refuse from the counter to the trash. The OXO Good Grips bench scraper’s thick rubber handle makes it comfortable to hold and use for long periods of time. It also has measurements printed on the blade, which is a useful addition for portioning. We aren’t exactly sure what it’s being used for at The Bear, but we’re pretty sure it’s a little bit of everything.

A gnocchi board is the cheapest way to start making pasta at home. The ridged, wooden board, shown here beside the bench scraper, is great for making cavatelli and other hand-rolled shapes. Gnocchi boards, with their stripped-down functionality, tend to look similar, so we can’t know for sure that the one shown on screen is the one we recommend. But with The Beef’s pivot to upscale Italian along with its name change, it makes sense that they’d have the right gear for making pasta by hand.

We aren’t 100% sure that the tongs used in The Bear’s second season are the ones we recommend, but Winco’s heavyweight tongs are about as ubiquitous in commercial kitchens as Nordic Ware baking sheets. They’re cheap and exceptionally durable, yet they provide a grip and dexterity that turn them into an extension of a chef’s hand.

Cuisinart’s stainless bowls look better than a generic metal bowl, and they perform better too. They’re particularly good at keeping your kitchen splatter-free if you’re using a hand mixer. In our experience, these bowls have survived countless wash cycles without getting dinged or rusted, and they come with convenient plastic lids. You can find a lot of clones out there, but we’re pretty sure that Sydney is using our top pick to whip up an omelet.

We’ve been longtime fans of Nordic Ware baking sheets. They’re made of thick, durable aluminum, and they come in an array of sizes. Their surprisingly low price and consistent performance make them a good choice for both home and professional kitchens, and they’re ideal for all sorts of tasks, from roasting vegetables to making whole sheet-pan dinners. Although Nordic Ware doesn’t recommend it, we’ve found that you can put them in the dishwasher too. We aren’t entirely sure that the ones used in The Bear are Nordic Ware, but the thick lip and the angled walls are awfully reminiscent of our top-pick sheet pan.

For almost 10 years, the Vitamix 5200 has been our top-pick blender, blitzing smoothies in a matter of seconds and whipping out creamy peanut butter without skipping. It’s great for making mayo and sauces (such as you might see in a fine-dining restaurant). It’s a staple of professional kitchens, and we aren’t surprised to find it at a Danish fine-dining restaurant based on Noma, as Will Poulter’s character Luca brings a dish to life with a twist of the Vitamix blender’s knob.

A workhorse of restaurant kitchens, the Gary Kunz Sauce Spoon is beloved by professional chefs. Its dimensions make it a useful tool not only for plating and serving, but also for basting, saucing, stirring, and even flipping delicate foods like scallops. Although it’s less likely to be found in the average Chicago Beef spot, the Kunz spoon that we suspect Carmy is carrying around in the first season is a nod to his past, when he worked in Michelin-starred restaurants.

As Marcus spends the first season of The Bear honing his craft as The Beef’s pastry chef, you can see him artfully dusting a chocolate cake with orange zest with our also-great pick, the Microplane 46020 Premium Classic Zester and Grater. We’ve loved this zester for a while; it’s sharp, maneuverable, and comfortable to hold. (Most importantly, its shape and size make it easier to avoid accidentally catching your knuckles on the sharp edge.)

The Kuhn Rikon Original Swiss Peeler is one of the most ubiquitous tools in professional kitchens. Its incredibly sharp blade and lightweight build make it easy to use for long, repetitive tasks (such as when Sydney is seen peeling a huge stack of carrots). The Kuhn Rikon peeler is also one of the least expensive kitchen tools we recommend, and, despite its plastic body, it feels surprisingly sturdy.

Marcus can be seen tinkering and perfecting his raspberry doughnut filling, toiling away on what we’re confident is our current budget-pick portable induction cooktop, the Duxtop 9100MC. We’ve recommended a number of portable cooktops from Duxtop over the years, including our current top pick, the Duxtop 9600LS. It’s precise, with 20 power settings and 20 temperature settings, which gives you a superior level of control over time and temperature of your food.

We’ve recommended the Mac Mighty MTH-80 chef’s knife for 10 years because, even after a decade of testing, it remains one of the most reliable, nimble chef’s knives we’ve come across. It also stays sharp and feels good in the hand.

The Mac Mighty made a guest appearance on Season 1 of The Bear, being used by sous-chef Sydney Adamu (played by Ayo Edebiri) to slice through an endless pile of vegetables.

And, though this is not entirely clear, the knife she accidentally stabs Richie with looks an awful lot like our budget pick, the Victorinox Fibrox Pro 8-Inch Chef’s Knife.

A minor plot point of The Bear’s second season is the arrival of new All-Clad cookware right before the restaurant’s opening. And we get the excitement, because All-Clad has been a Wirecutter favorite for years. All-Clad’s skillet distributes heat evenly, it’s well balanced and easy to hold, and can go from cooktop to oven. There probably isn’t a better skillet for preparing bucatini alla gricia than the All-Clad D3.

In the background of the show’s famous braciole flashback scene, Michael can be seen nestling meat into a blue Cuisinart Chef’s Classic casserole—our former also-great Dutch oven pick. Though our testers did like its wide cooking surface, we think our long-standing top pick, the Lodge 6 Quart Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven, is easier to manage (it’s a bit smaller and lighter, but it has bigger handles and still delivers great results).

Of all the Wirecutter-approved kitchen gear that passes through the doors of The Original Beef, perhaps none is as durable as the cast-iron skillet. What seems to be our also-great pick, the Lodge Pre-Seasoned 12-inch Cast Iron Skillet, makes an appearance in the opening minutes of the first season’s sixth episode. This heavy, preseasoned skillet is excellent for searing, frying, and even baking, and if taken care of, it can last decades (which is why we’ve been recommending it since 2017).

In the background of Carmy’s fever dream, you may have spotted a KitchenAid stand mixer. The KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer has been our top pick for 10 years. We’ve tested models from plenty of other brands, and the iconic KitchenAid mixer still comes out on top, which may be why Carmy dreams of it.

In our exhaustive search to find the best canned tomatoes, we tried over 25 different cans of tomatoes, and we landed on San Merican Tomatoes (formerly named San Marzano Tomatoes) as some of our favorites. Apparently, they’re also popular in The Bear’s kitchen, and probably for the same reasons we like them: their consistently high-quality, plump texture and rich flavor. (We have not, however, tested them as a method for hiding cash.)

Painter’s tape is great to have on hand in professional and home kitchens alike. It’s easy to write on, peels off quickly, and doesn’t leave sticky residue. It can help you keep track of expiration dates and whatever that Tupperware-contained mystery goop is in the back of your fridge. So, of course, this is one of the first things Carmy introduces to the back-of-house at The Original Beef of Chicagoland.

Bar Keepers Friend has been keeping kitchens shiny since it was invented in the 1880s. It can restore the brilliant metallic lustre to gunked-up stainless steel skillets, brighten heirloom-quality Dutch ovens, and make even the filthiest stovetops look new again. Bar Keepers Friend was also the cleaner of choice when sous chef Tina was tasked with bringing back to life the crusty old skillets haunting The Beef’s kitchen.

Few dinnerware sets can survive the abuse of restaurant settings while also looking refined and elevating the food they hold. But we’ve found that Jono Pandolfi’s stoneware can do both. Jono Pandolfi’s dinnerware is dishwasher- and microwave-safe, and it’s used in some of the best restaurants across the country—including Carmy’s ambitious new restaurant, The Bear.

We think Away’s The Carry-On is the best hard-sided carry-on you can find. The bag’s minimalist design, durable construction, and slick wheels, paired with its killer warranty, make it a great choice for frequent travelers who want a hard-sided suitcase. It’s pretty good if you’re traveling to Copenhagen to study at the best restaurant in the world, too.

This article was edited by Annemarie Conte and Marguerite Preston.