“I frigging get home, get Uber Eats, and go to bed,” Matty Matheson, a real-life chef and executive producer on The Bear, says of his mid-production eating habits, a far cry from the fine dining his show depicts. “We try to eat out as a group every once or twice a week to stay level. You would think that it’s this glamorous thing, but you’re torched by the end of the night.”

He does, however, admit to a newfound appreciation for hot dogs, which he doesn’t dress with ketchup anymore. “Even though I own a burger shop, I’m definitely more of a hot dog person than a burger person now,” Matheson tells Vanity Fair. “Gene & Jude’s in Chicago, I love their hot dogs so much. They have a long line, but it’s worth it. Being in Chicago for three to almost four months a year now, for the last two years, I’ve turned into a big glizzy boy.”

Despite being a renowned Canadian restaurateur, Matheson plays one of the only characters who is not in the kitchen to cook. He stars as handyman Neil Fak, the type of character who wears a suit to the restaurant’s opening but still keeps a screwdriver in his lapel just in case. Matheson is also a culinary lead alongside show creator Christopher Storer’s sister Courtney. Together, the pair advise Storer and showrunner Joanna Calo on everything from the build of The Bear’s kitchen to its menu. “We’re building a real restaurant,” Matheson explains. “Designing a kitchen, what do we need? Nice plans, this, that. The kitchen is set up to cook that food too,” he adds. “We could go in there, and, if we really could have fire and gas, we would have the right equipment to execute the menu that we wrote.”

Their dynamic often echoes—and inspires—that of The Bear’s two lead characters. “We’re doing what Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) are doing,” Matheson says. He and Courtney will hash out menu ideas in front of Storer and Calo in order to both generate menu items and demonstrate the cadence with which chefs speak to one another. “The synergy needs to be really going,” Matheson says of crafting a menu that reflects its executive chefs. “We really wanted to think about, Where does Sydney come from? What are her technique-driven ideas? What is her heritage—what are the flavors? Carmy, what are his flavors, his lineage, and culinary sense? And how do you take those ideas and who they are and create a culinary voice for each of those characters?”

Chasing the authenticity of an actual restaurant is sometimes at odds with the constraints of making a TV show, Matheson concedes. Sometimes they’re doing something, and me and Coco are stressed out, and Chris is like, ‘Look at the frame. We literally are not seeing it.’ If it’s not in the shot, it literally doesn’t exist,” he says, adding, “We only know how to do it the real way, the hard way. A lot of people are like, ‘It’s just for TV, it doesn’t have to be so precise.’ No, because the actors are going to have to move, and if they’re making the Feast of the Seven Fishes, they have to turn around and the equipment needs to be there.”

That brings us to the season’s starry sixth episode, a very Berzatto Christmas that introduces family members played by Jamie Lee Curtis, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson, Gillian Jacobs, and John Mulaney. Matheson smiles when recalling the original cast members mixing with the new arrivals, all crammed under one roof. “Jamie Lee’s getting in there with the garlic butter all over her hands,” he laughs. “She just came up and kissed me on the cheek right away. It was truly chaos.”

The propulsive episode was shot over the course of a week across three neighboring houses, each one’s kitchen wafting with the scent of Seven Fishes. An idea to use prop food for the family dinner from hell was proposed, then quickly vetoed. “What do you mean fake food?” Matheson and Storer replied. “We were like, ‘No, this house is going to smell like seafood. If this house smells like roasting branzino and sauce and garlic, you’re just in the zone. That house smells like Christmas. That house smelled like the Feast of Seven Fishes.”

The world’s appetite for The Bear has only increased since its splashy debut last summer. Ratings spiked for the show’s second season, making it FX’s most-watched Hulu premiere to date. Matheson, who still has his hand in multiple restaurants, tries to stay away from the hype for a few days post-premiere. “This year, I was somewhere where there was no reception, riding some motorcycles, so it was really nice to just be away from it for a couple of days, then come back, and everyone would be like, ‘Dude, dude, dude. It’s crazy,’” he says. “Some of these release dates can be very melancholy and very stressful, and it’s a beautiful thing for people to connect with this show and feel the feelings they feel about it.”

In the second season, all of the characters are growing into their roles—Marcus (Lionel Boyce) on a sojourn to make pastries in Copenhagen, Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) learning what it takes to be a sous-chef at culinary school. Matheson channeled some of that energy into expanding his first-ever onscreen role. “I acted a lot more in this season, and it’s very nerve-racking for me, it’s very intense. I have a lot of fear of acting,” he admits. “Everyone is so good and it really rattles me, so I have to work a lot of late nights trying to remember the simple lines that I do have.”

Sharpening his skills as a performer also meant trusting his own instincts. “Having even the confidence to be able to try things on this season versus last season, I was just so nervous. I’m sure people can tell,” Matheson says sheepishly. “I was genuinely nervous in every scene. I don’t even know what’s happening, it’s crazy.’” And while his confidence has grown, Matheson says he’s in no rush to lead his own standalone episode à la Marcus or Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Richie. “That’s up to Chris and Joanna,” he says. “I don’t know if they need to do a whole episode on Fak, but maybe. It’d be scary to hold down a whole ep.”

Across The Bear’s two seasons, dishes themselves have become characters—and vehicles for stirring emotion in the human ones. There’s the comfort that comes with a sour cream and onion chip-topped omelet Sydney makes Natalie (Abby Elliott), just hours before her restaurant opens. And the stress emanating from a tuna casserole Pete (Chris Witaske) dares to bring to Seven Fishes is palpable, despite never emerging from beneath its tin foil. “Whether it’s the focal point of a scene, the butt of a joke, a symbol, or clues for a character’s backstory, food in film is about more than just caloric intake,” Matheson writes in the introduction to A24’s new cookbook, Scrounging. The book concocts its own chaos menu with recipes for cinematic dishes including “Alma’s Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy Omelet” from Phantom Thread and “Ted Kramer’s Divorced Dad French Toast” from Kramer vs. Kramer. “There’s often an underbelly or a slightly deranged element to eating…. We do crazy shit when we’re testing our limits, or when no one is watching.” Then again, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who isn’t watching The Bear, awaiting the distinctive tastes of its next course.