Fasting is a big sacrifice for Phil Rosenthal
We enjoy watching Phil Rosenthal eat as much as he enjoys eating. But it’s about more than food, he says
Brigit Grant is the Jewish News Supplements Editor
One thing’s for sure. Phil Rosenthal will never go hungry. And he won’t ever have to wait for a table, because his face always gets him to the front of any restaurant queue. “I will stand in line if I really want something, as not everyone has seen the show,” he concedes. “But the worst words in the world are, ‘Do you know who I am?’ I never want to be that guy.”
Phil could never be ‘that guy’. Channelling boundless charm, he is beloved by proprietors and chefs in the world’s best eateries. For five seasons – with a sixth due to air from 18 October – his Netflix hit show, Somebody Feed Phil, has made him the most wanted diner. Whether he’s eating gold egg in Lisbon’s 2 Michelin star Belcanto or kvelling over a herring sandwich at Tel Aviv’s Sherry Herring, viewers subliminally enjoy the food too.
He is deliciously Jewish with his “Oy” after each bite, his hunt for rugelach around Zabar’s NYC or throwing in ‘khaloshing’ while gondaliering in Venice. But the most precious Jewish element was the inclusion of his parents, Helen and Max, on video calls, littered with misheard words and interruptions. “I still think they were the best part of the show,” says Phil.
Holocaust survivor Max Rosenthal died last June at the age of 96, and Helen, 86, his wife of 60 years, died in 2019. That they were both a “good age” – as the cliché goes – rarely helps the bereaved and Phil is no exception. “It’s never enough. Not when you love them. I have friends now in their nineties who are passing away. If you see people often and love them, it’s never long enough.”
That he catapulted his parents to stardom in their twilight years makes him happy. “My mother always claimed not to care, until she was recognised in the street. Then she lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Having spent his early years in New York with no money, Phil wanted to take his parents to the restaurants he once saved up to visit. “They thought I was out of my mind spending $100 on a dinner, when I could barely afford rent. So when I could afford to take them to French restaurant Lutèce (now closed) they went just to humour me. My mother complained until she took a bite of the food, then said: ‘This happens to be very good.’”
Given Phil’s taste for haute cuisine, one might assume (wrongly) that his mother had honed his taste buds, but she wasn’t a great cook. However she did get a four-star rating for her matzo ball soup, from Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud (episode 6/season 2). “You’re either brought up with great food and appreciate it or you seek it out. My dad just wanted what he wanted and finished whatever was put in front of him. Give him fluffy scrambled eggs, and he was the happiest man in the world. Are my eggs fluffy? is the inscription on his gravestone; on my mother’s, beside his, it says – ‘I’m listening to the opera.’ That’s what they cared about most.” And Phil, of course, who pays tribute to them in the final episode of season 6, and it made him cry. His parents’ greatest hits are also in his new book, a companion to the series, which also contains the most requested recipes from the first four seasons.
“There’s an audio version with behind-the-scenes dialogue too – it’s a multimedia experience,” adds Phil, who is donating all book proceeds to the Rosenthal Family Foundation, which runs school arts projects lead by his wife, actress Monica Horan, assisted by children Lily and Ben. “I’ve been blessed. Anything I can do to give back is a privilege and an honour.”
That there will be more seasons of Somebody Feed Phil is surely a no-brainer for Netflix, as there is nothing more enjoyable than watching the gregarious fellow who co-wrote Everybody Loves Raymond fly somewhere to nosh. But there’s more to it than that for Phil.
“It’s the response I get. I was just out driving, heard a honk, and saw a family in the next car waving wildly at me. So I rolled down the window and they told me how much they love the show. I would be crazy to want to give up the beautiful interaction I have with people.” And that’s what he gets wherever he goes, as well as acceptance from his Jewish fans who look the other way when he salivates over prawns.
Phil isn’t religious, but always fasts on Yom Kippur. “I do it because it ties me to my roots, to my parents, their parents and beyond. I feel it in a spiritual way, not a religious way, if that make sense? I see it as good for the soul. And what bigger sacrifice is there for a food fan than fasting?”
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