Creatively speaking “The Bear” doesn’t contain much fat. People rank episodes from best to least as a matter of internet compulsion. Still, its overall consistency leads us to devour seasons in one sitting before rewatching carefully, like mindful eaters.

The truly devoted look for the industry nods and shopping suggestions, although if you love food as I do, you may keep your eyes peeled for glimpses of special ingredients and preparation techniques. The third season has it all, meeting Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Syd (Ayo Edebiri) and the rest of The Original Beef crew as they’re launching their ambitious bistro in Chicago's River North neighborhood.

With the menu’s elevation to haute cuisine comes an eyeful of extraordinary elements – beef slices with gorgeously rosy centers, blood orange reductions and gleaming pearls of roe.

But the ingredient that really caught my attention doesn't appear on film, only on paper. “I have a bill in my hand for $11,268 for butter!” barks Oliver Platt’s Uncle Jimmy, Carmy’s rich relative and his restaurant's financial backer. The camera briefly cuts to said bill listing “Orwellian Unsalted Butter” and “Orwellian Salted Butter.”

“Buddy, what is it? A rare Transylvanian five-titted goat? We cannot . . . keep this up!”

Carmy simply answers, “It’s Orwellian,” as if that explains everything, but it doesn’t. “Dystopian butter?” Uncle Jimmy tersely asks. “What are you talking about?”

To those in the know, namedropping Orwell, Vermont is a subtle reference to Animal Farm Creamery, the small dairy renowned for making cultured butter so luxuriant, and so scrumptious, that it supplies a handful of the most upscale restaurants in the United States.

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Some of these establishments cameo in “The Bear” either by mention or feature, along with their proprietors. Per Se and French Laundry owner Thomas Keller, who appears in the third season finale, is the reason Animal Farm became the brand of choice for top restaurants to have and serve. His relationship with Animal Farm dates back some 25 years when Diane St. Clair began experimenting with making the type of cultured butter that is common in Europe.

In one of the creamery's earliest New York Times profiles, St. Clair described in 2005 overnighting a sample of her carefully handmade butter to Keller to ask his opinion on her........

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