Gone are the days when a taste of the chef’s favourite dishes was reserved for just a few lucky diners at the end of a dinner shift. With a growing – ahem – appetite for intimate and immersive dining experiences, some of the world’s best chefs are opening up their kitchens to a new generation of food enthusiasts who favour the masters’ expertise in pairing dishes and assembling a tasting menu over their own à-la-carte choice. Securing a reservation in one of the world’s best restaurants is any diner’s dream, sure, but seeing nearly every dish being prepared in front of you and being talked through their preparation and ingredients by the person that’s come up with them? Chef’s kiss.

In that festive episode of The Bear, the Berzatto family Christmas is the hardest shift our boy Carmy ever pulls. This throwback episode, the second-season centrepiece of FX’s buzzy kitchen drama, sees our favourite white T-shirt-wearing chef reluctantly return home to expectations greater than those at his Michelin-starred day job, as a pressure-cooker get-together boils over into a gruelling, booze-soaked unwrapping of long held grudges and toxic familial dynamics.

The big end-of-year blowout was once the centrepiece of most companies’ social calendars. (Although, at the end of the calendar rather than the centre of it, for obvious reasons.) But times have changed, and so has work – as has the work party, as a result.

Who have you landed in the secret Santa? Huh, that guy off the telly? It’s admittedly an unlikely scenario – and we pity the lower-level office drone at Waystar Royco who gets Roman Roy in theirs – but if it were to transpire, at least you’ll have had a head start. You’ve already put in the hours with these people, after all. And you’ll have seen the memes and read the fan theories. You might even know the fictional characters who litter the best TV shows of 2023 better than the person who also sat through them, next to you on the sofa… Just saying.

Gone are the days when a taste of the chef’s favourite dishes was reserved for just a few lucky diners at the end of a dinner shift. With a growing – ahem – appetite for intimate and immersive dining experiences, some of the world’s best chefs are opening up their kitchens to a new generation of food enthusiasts who favour the masters’ expertise in pairing dishes and assembling a tasting menu over their own à-la-carte choice. Securing a reservation in one of the world’s best restaurants is any diner’s dream, sure, but seeing nearly every dish being prepared in front of you and being talked through their preparation and ingredients by the person that’s come up with them? Chef’s kiss.

In that festive episode of The Bear, the Berzatto family Christmas is the hardest shift our boy Carmy ever pulls. This throwback episode, the second-season centrepiece of FX’s buzzy kitchen drama, sees our favourite white T-shirt-wearing chef reluctantly return home to expectations greater than those at his Michelin-starred day job, as a pressure-cooker get-together boils over into a gruelling, booze-soaked unwrapping of long held grudges and toxic familial dynamics.