This Creepy Bear is Throwing $200 Underground Dinner Parties in Seattle

Today’s culinary landscape is dotted with boundary-pushing chefs. With Jackson Pollack-esque plates, innovative white aprons are redefining what a dining experience can be and using the term “molecular gastronomy” with straight faces.

But sometimes you just want to enjoy good company and a fabulous hunk of beef prepared by some goofball in a bear suit.

Or so seems to be the philosophy of the plush grizzly behind an unusual dinner party series sweeping Seattle. Run by an anonymous chef known only as “Bear,” the so-called Cow by Bear events treat intimate groups of diners (10-14 people) to five-course meals with wine pairings at undisclosed locations around the city. Refuting the ol’ bear-salmon stereotype, rib-eye steaks dry-aged for 50 days are Bear’s signature item (did you really expect a vegetarian option from a bear?).

The ticketed dinners, which cost a steep $195 per person, run most weekends through at least the end of 2017 at locations revealed to ticketholders the day before via email. If we’re to believe promotional videos, the costumed bear mingles with selfie-snapping guests as they sip presumably expensive wine. It’s like Disney World for adults who Instagram their protein.

Cow by Bear started in 2011 when the unnamed Bear chef began hosting dinner parties out of his (its?) San Diego apartment. Apparently, there’s now more than one “Bear,” as ongoing events in San Diego and Seattle take place on the same nights.

In 2016, a San Diego filmmaker released a mini documentary about the SoCal pop-ups, replete with a elaborate backstory about Bear joining a circus and eventually cooking “human food” in some of “the world’s greatest restaurants.” (On camera, Bear’s far more disarming than his eerie mascot grin suggests.)

“When I started Cow by Bear, all I knew was that I didn’t want it to be a restaurant,” says Bear, whose voice is creepily distorted throughout the doc. “I wanted to recreate how dinner goes down in the wild, when the salmon would run in the summer and us bears would gather and enjoy these majestic feasts together.”

It seems the main goal is sucking the pretension (save for maybe the secretive locales and whopper of a pricetag) out of the traditional fine dining experience by injecting a bit of levity and a communal vibe.

Noble enough.

Cow by Bear – Meet the Bear from Marq Evans. on Vimeo.