Unlike Anthony Bourdain, Phil Rosenthal's show is for people "afraid of everything," like him

Phil Rosenthal is the Emmy Award-winning creator, writer and executive producer of the hit CBS sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond." After the show ended in 2005, Rosenthal took his talents on the other side of the camera to host PBS’ "I'll Have What Phil's Having," which later became Netflix’s "Somebody Feed Phil," a travel food series that takes Rosenthal around the globe and outside of his culinary comfort zone. When I talked to Rosenthal recently about making that switch, he said, "I thought there must be a show for people like me who are even afraid to leave the house, who a step out of their comfort zone is getting off the couch."

In seven seasons of "Somebody Feed Phil," Rosenthal has moved far beyond his couch, enjoying a creative mix of fine dining, street cuisine and local dishes from places as close as Nashville to as far as Dubai. Season 7 offers more with trips to the nation's capital, Mumbai, Iceland and more, where we met with a colorful collection of culinary experts including Chef Kwame Onwuachi, learned the dishes that get CNN's Jack Tapper excited and traded jokes with the legendary, late television executive Norman Lear.

Food and travel documentaries can be intimidating for many because the hosts are usually fearless experts, who are willing to jog through warring countries just to take a bite of an exotic pig head. Rosenthal occupies a comfortable space because he's like one of us — just a guy out in the world, having fun and learning, while giving us the confidence to be as curious as we are fearful when we explore.

"The way I sold the show first to PBS and then to Netflix,” Phil explained, “I said one line. I said, 'I'm exactly like Anthony Bourdain, if he was afraid of everything.'"

Watch my "Salon Talks" episode with Phil Rosenthal here, or read a Q&A of our conversation below to hear more about why Kyoto is the one place he would love to revisit, what city has the best burger in the world and more on the new season of "Somebody Feed Phil."

This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You’re a pretty fit guy, but you eat all this great food all the time. How much can you consume?

That's the number one question I get. You were nice about it. I do these shows where I go on tour and I talk to audiences and a little five-year-old girl got up to the mic and she said, "May I ask you a question?" And I said, "Of course, dear, what is it?" She goes, "How come you're not fat?" So I'll tell you what I tell her, which is, you know how they make a dog food commercial? They don't feed the dog until the commercial. So, I'm the dog.

You only eat for work. 

I know it sounds crazy, but let's say we're in town for a week. That's how long it takes to shoot the show. One week in each place. You see me eating a lot, but that's all I ate that day, was that scene, and then right up against it is the next scene. So it looks like I just go from eating to eating to eating, but that's probably the next day. Maybe we do two scenes in a day. That's how I do it. The rest of the time I'm walking or working out. This doesn't happen by itself.

What happens if you eat something that is so good, but you know you have to save space?

I'm not good at that. You hit on something that's the other secret: I don't finish anything because I know a lot is coming. Unless it is the best thing I ever ate, I'm not finishing that. Plus by the way, the crew, they're looking at me while I'm eating these delicious things, so I share it with them.

The crew's always hungry.

But I love to share it with them. It's fun to share it with them. It's only good if you can share it. That's really a philosophy. [Before we started filming,] you talked about being alone in a restaurant, and yet you FaceTimed your wife because you wanted to at least share the experience with her. It's only good if you can share it.

It put me in a doghouse. We've been in New York like three times since then and we haven't been to Tatiana together.

All right. But right now here, I want you to tell your wife you're taking her.

I'm taking you to Tatiana. Phil's going to pay for it.

This season you go to D.C., which made me extremely happy because I live near D.C.

Yes.

You go to Iceland, Dubai, Mumbai, Kyoto, Scotland and more. Is there a common thread between these cities?

They all have amazing food. We even went to Orlando and I was not expecting much. I was expecting Epcot, but here's the thing about Disney: they've been there 50 years. They have employed tens of thousands of immigrants. The immigrants have set up their own communities, cultures and brought their food with them, their cuisines, and so it's like a mini New York or a mini LA where you have all these neighborhoods of different places from around the world. It's phenomenal. We're calling that the real Orlando and we don't set foot in the park.

You kind of do that in Dubai as well.

That's right because you expect you drive down the street in Dubai and you go, “Oh, this is what it would be like if Vegas had real money.” It’s so built up. It's so modern and spectacular. But I thought it was going to be all casino food or hotel food. Then there's old Dubai and that's a city of immigrants. It’s over 80% immigrants. [They have] amazing Indian food. Amazing. 

I had one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever had just in my life, was a meal with a Palestinian woman who made me food from her hands and gave it to me. I got emotional. This was before all the troubles, but I'm telling you, there was a real connection there, real like a spiritual almost. I'm not one of these woo-woo guys, but I felt something so powerful and we just, we're friends and that's how it can be and how it should be.

When you were in Mumbai, you experienced the market and you said something that was very interesting to me: "People said, I need to be able to experience all of life at once. Rich, poor, beautiful, crazy, overwhelming." I thought it was such a beautiful way to illustrate that part of the journey. I just wondered if you could elaborate on what you experienced there.

Mumbai, they call it maximum city because, we're sitting here in New York now. New York is maybe the center of the universe, but I swear to you, I'm from here, I never saw more hustle and bustle in my life. Imagine being dropped into Times Square at midnight, only it's summer and it's hot and every manner of transportation in the world is going through it at the same time that it's packed with people. And I mean everything from a tuk-tuk, to a scooter, to a bus, to a cow, to a rickshaw, to everything. Everyone is honking. It's absolutely overwhelming, and yet nobody's mad. Nobody's angry. They're honking just to say, “I'm here. I'm here.” There's no traffic lights.

No, that scene with those smiling faces was so beautiful. 

They're so friendly and sweet, no matter the stature of the person, meaning you'd see the same smile on a very poor person as you would with a very rich person. They're happy people. It's amazing. I was so worried about the poverty that I would see there. How do you do your light little fun travel show when people are suffering? But I didn't see suffering. I did see poor people, but I didn't see suffering. I see more suffering here. 

They're just gorgeous and friendly and outgoing. I tell you the best thing about travel is it changes your perspective. So here I was afraid to go. I didn't know how to show it, how to justify it. One way to justify it is when you go, you try to help a little bit. You try to make each place that you visit a tiny bit better than you found it. That's important to me. 

By the way, the other thing I was afraid of in Mumbai was everyone I know who went has gotten sick because we're not used to the water. We're not used to different stuff in the food.

Well, you're seven seasons in, so I imagine that your stomach has evolved.

I think my stomach can handle a lot, but everyone I knew got sick. So they said, "You got to be extra careful. You got to not only brush your teeth with bottled water, you have to rinse your toothbrush then in bottled water to make sure." I was super careful and didn't get sick. 

There was one place I got sick and the whole history of the show. You know where it was? San Francisco, and I don't even know from what because I ate a lot that day. I don't know what it was.

How have you changed as a person from eating in all these different places? What has this show done to Phil Rosenthal the man?

The way I sold the show first to PBS and then to Netflix, I said one line. I said, "I'm exactly like Anthony Bourdain, if he was afraid of everything." And I meant it. I mean that's not just funny. It's really, I would watch him . . .

Because he was fearless.

A superhero, right. The best. But I would watch him and I would go, “That's amazing. I'm never doing that.” I'm not doing that. I'm not going into a dune buggy. I'm not going to a country at war to get shot at. I'm not doing it. 

Then I thought there must be a show for people like me who are even afraid to leave the house, who a step out of their comfort zone is getting off the couch. Two-thirds of Americans don't even have a passport. Imagine that. They don't want to go anywhere. They don't want to try stuff, so I thought if I at least tried stuff, maybe that's a big step for other people.

How it changed me was the more I do it, the less afraid I am. Why? Because our biggest fear is the unknown. But if you do something that you were afraid of, now it's at least known to you. It doesn't mean I'm going to do it every time again, but I'm a tiny bit braver than when we started.

You were pretty convincing on the Dubai episode when you said this is the best burger you ever had and if you want a burger, you have to literally get on a plane and go to Dubai.

It is amazing how sometimes the outsider (he's not American, he didn't grow up with burgers) . . . sometimes that point of view from outside has the best view.

Of everywhere you went in season seven, if you got to go back to one city to re-eat your way through that city, which one would it be?

Kyoto.

Okay, that was easy for you to answer.

You ever been to Japan?

I've never been to Japan.

There's something about it. My wife is with me on four of these episodes of the eight. It's really nice. When we got to Kyoto, it was so beautiful, so serene. That's not a word I throw around a lot because we're talking about Mumbai and New York. These are not serene places. This, you go there and it is just like this. Japan was bombed during World War II. They bombed almost every city. Kyoto, they didn't touch, so there's over 2,000 ancient temples and shrines still there in Kyoto. 

Imagine walking around the city and finding not just a temple, but all the grounds of the temple, all the manicured beautiful trees and forests. It's a joke, but you go to a pharmacy in Japan and you buy a pack of gum, they wrap it for you as if it's for your 100th birthday. It's crazy the level of detail and care that's taken in every aspect of life, including the food. 

Let's say we want dumplings tonight. You don't just go to a restaurant that has dumplings. You go to the dumpling place with 10 seats. That's all they do. Are they the best dumplings you ever had in your life? Yes. You want noodles. What kind of noodles? You want the soba noodles or the udon noodles because that's going to determine which restaurant you go to. So we go to the soba noodle place. All they serve there is cold soba noodles with some dipping sauce. One of the best meals I ever had in my life.

So it's like after leaving a place like Mumbai, Kyoto might be the place to reset.

I'll say, or just reset from anywhere else in the world. There's nothing like it. On the first day, I was sad because I knew I only had a week there.

On the first day. Wow.

On the first day I go, “Wow, I'm going to hate to leave this place.”

You touched on this a little bit earlier, how food brings everyone together.

Yes. It's the great connector.

I think about how separated, how divisive our country is right now, and food is something that we all have in common, something that we all share. Is there a way for us to use food to heal us?

Did you see the D.C. episode yet?

I did see the D.C. episode.

So you know what happens at the end of that episode. It was something I had in mind. When we went to D.C., I said, "I wonder if I can make this happen."

Are we doing spoilers?

It's okay.

We'll just say we're getting Democrats and Republicans together at Maketto.

There you go. You got it. That was not easy. I couldn't find a Republican and a Democrat to come and sit and have a meal with me because they didn't want to be together. What the hell? But then I did.

Brian Fitzpatrick, who's a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, and Pete Buttigieg, our Secretary of Transportation, and they sat and they were fantastic and they serve on a committee that I didn't know existed. It's called the Bipartisanship Committee. When I asked them what do you think is the biggest problem our country faces today? They said it was bipartisanship, and that makes total sense. I thought it would be guns or climate change or whatever. [There are] so many problems, but none of the problems will get fixed unless the two sides talk. And a good way to get people to talk is to sit down and eat something together.

Maybe next season you can get Mitch McConnell to play a game of basketball with Al Sharpton and you referee and then everybody eats together. I'll pay to see that.

I said put a buffet in Congress because you can't hate somebody if you're eating with them. I really don't think so because right away we're doing something that we all do that's known to us. Even if you hate them going in, I swear you'll feel a little better with them once you do something completely relatable with them. You can't help it. Oh look, we're at least, at the very least human beings who like to eat. And if the food is good, it puts you in a better mood. If you can share a smile or a laugh with the person, now we're friends and we might eat again. So to me, I'm not just using food as this fun thing. I actually think it's important.

You've had success in front of the camera and behind the camera. How does it feel about being in front of the camera at this phase of your career?

It's amazing to be this age and wake up and find yourself Taylor Swift.

You’re having a lot of fun with it.

Of course.

And you get to work with your wife and son, which is also amazing.

I do. And my daughter too. In fact, I wrote a kids' book with my daughter that's coming out this week called “Just Try It.” It's exactly what we're talking about. It's not just for little kids either. The book is about a dad who eats everything, this little girl who won't try anything, but how many adults do you know that won't try stuff?

It's too many.

Right. It's really about just having a little bit of an open mind. That's all it is. Wouldn't the world be better if we just tried new things or tried to talk to new people?

I definitely want to say rest in peace to Richard Lewis.

Oh, what a great guy.

We're big “Curb Your Enthusiasm” fans around here, and I do think our fans want to know what did you do to Larry David to the point where he wouldn't want to have lunch with you? 

Hysterical. I love that. I didn't do anything to him, but he understands that we are opposite personalities. The name of my show would be “Why Curb Your Enthusiasm?” As someone positive and someone who loves other people, that could be annoying to a guy like Larry, so he doesn't want to sit with me. He's worried that I was going to ask him to be on my show. Of course the first thing I do when I see him is, "Hey, you got to do my show. You want to go to Ethiopia? Do you like coffee?" And he's like, “Ugh.”

He had this great bit on destination weddings. I hate destination weddings. He said, "For a wedding you shouldn't have to travel more than like 10 miles or you don't got to go."

I can't say that he's wrong. I was once invited to a bar mitzvah on an Alaskan cruise to Alaska. That's a week commitment. On a cruise ship.

As a memoirist, I write a whole lot about my life, what happened in the past, what's going on, projections in the future, and I heard you talk about how “Everybody Loves Raymond” was drawn from Ray Romano’s life and parts of your life. What are some of the key parts for you when building a story just around those personal things that happen to you and within your relationships?

I think it's the key to everything. I think you know this because you're a writer, don't you find that when you get really down to the specifics of a situation, something that happened to you and you describe it in your own personal way, that that's when you start connecting with people?

Absolutely.

Because even if your specifics aren't mine, I'm going to relate to it because I deal in specifics too. That's what gets us connected to each other, is those specifics, so that's really the secret. I tell everyone, "You all have a story in you." All we are is a collection of everything that's happened to us, filtered through the way we think, and that's what makes us each individual and each valuable story-wise.

Would you write another sitcom?

Sure I would. By the way, right after “Raymond,” I tried to write a sitcom every year. Nobody wanted it. That's why I have to do this.