Somebody Feed Phil

Genuine, funny, and kind, Phil Rosenthal is the best food travel host since Anthony Bourdain.

Genuine, funny, and kind, Phil Rosenthal is the best food travel host since Anthony Bourdain.

Shortly after Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain was pitching a new idea for his next project. Lydia Tenaglia at New York Times Television caught wind of it and pitched an idea of her own and A Cook’s Tour was born. The food travel genre has always been great fodder for literature — M.F.K Fisher, Patience Gray, Peter Mayle — to name a few, but it was Bourdain who brought his writing talent and cinematic eye to create what we now see across the cable and Netflix landscape. A Cook’s Tour evolved into No Reservations and jumped to the Travel Channel paving the way for Andrew Zimmern and others. No Reservations again evolved into Parts Unknown on CNN.

If nothing else, Bourdain was honest. He was genuine. He would easily show his disdain for something as well as his appreciation. And we loved him for it. He and his crew put you in the middle of amazing locations, and incredible food, with unprecedented cinematography. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve poured a Ricard and watched the Provence episode just to catch a glimpse of the place as I remember it and the feeling of the land and the people and the experience.

He was also that friend who you really liked but occasionally said something that made you cringe. And you let him get away with it because, well, he was just being Tony. And his cynicism, style, and the occasional cringe was exactly what we needed in the early years of the new century.

Fast forward to 2015

I don’t know why I was on the PBS app looking for something to watch, but I stumbled upon I’ll Have What Phil’s Having. Phil Rosenthal, who you may know most from a little show called Everybody Loves Raymond which he co-produced with Ray Romano, decided to film himself being wowed with child-like joy and awe of the great places of the world, their people, and their food. And it worked. The first episode I watched, Italy, is still my favorite. I then went to the beginning and binged the rest. Afterward, drunk with gluttony, I sat regretfully on my couch wondering how long I had to wait for the next season. It would be awhile. But I didn’t mind; whenever I wanted a pure laugh or to counter a particularly hard episode of Parts Unknown, I would switch over to PBS and rewatch one of Phil’s episodes.

And then in 2018 the more refined, Somebody Feed Phil came to Netflix (Season 3 became available on May 29th). It is the closest in format to the genre Bourdain took to another level. Going into a location and, by using food as the common ground, and fantastic cinematography, give us a glimpse of places and restaurants we run to put on the to-visit, or revisit, list while reminding us that, when you boil it all down, we are more alike than not.

There are other amazing shows that are attempting to fill the void, like Gordon Ramsay’s Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, David Chang’s Ugly Delicious, and Andrew Zimmern’s What’s Eating America, but it’s Somebody Feed Phil that most closely feels like No Reservations, except, not.

The first season was a bit off, I have to admit, but I think that was because Netflix didn’t really know what to do with Phil. It seemed to be produced more like a pure documentary. The past two seasons have been much better and have found full stride and Phil is allowed to be a bit more, well, Phil. And that’s why it works and why I think it ranks up there with No Reservations. It’s the same reason why Diners Drive Ins and Dives works. Because Phil is being authentic Phil. When he tastes something amazing, you know it. When he’s nervous about something, you know it. And when he meets someone else with true passion, he shows it.

The show is on the total opposite side of the scale from Part’s Unknown. It is definitely its own show and it is all Phil. Like a chef who takes a dish and makes it his own, Phil took the recipe and made it into something only he could do. Where Bourdain had his hard New York cynicism, Phil has his childlike wonder. Where Bourdain had literary prose, Phil has his comedy and just this side of dad joke corniness. Where Bourdain used food as an entry into the politics of a place, Phil uses food as an entry into the commonality we share with other cultures and the pure joy of eating something good and sharing that experience with friends, both long known and just met. And I have a suspicion that if you were eating anything, anywhere close to Phil, you would become one of his friends within a matter of minutes. But only if you shared…

It’s sentimental. It’s funny. And maybe it is just a bit schmaltzy. But maybe, just maybe, especially with the way 2020 has been so far, it’s exactly what we need right now.

And, it is definitely made with love.

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John Harbour is a United States Air Force veteran where he was a hostage rescue sniper with the Emergency Services Team (EST) and the leader of an airborne quick response team (AFT). He was last stationed outside of Las Vegas in the middle of the Nevada desert. He also served as diplomatic protection at the United Nations headquarters in New York, is a classically trained actor, has tended bar, worked in advertising and technology and enjoys nothing more than traveling the world searching for stories.

John lives in New York City with his wife and is the author of articles, short fiction, and the novel Nighthawks. He is an incurable wanderlust and is currently working on the novel The Heart. His first non-fiction book, Diary of a Hippie: A Real-Life Journal of What to Expect During a Total Hip Replacement chronicles his journey from diagnosis through the operation and recovery.

Connect with him at www.johnharbour.com/contact for all social media channels and email.