The fourth season of the Netflix travel docuseries "Somebody Feed Phil" premiered Friday, and in it, host Phil Rosenthal is tackling the streets of San Francisco, including a whirlwind trip through Napa Valley, in a new episode.
Rosenthal, the former showrunner for the hit show "Everybody Loves Raymond," tours the city with a number of local culinary heavyweights in the episode. He takes a trip through the Ferry Building with Alice Waters, including a visit to Tanya Holland's (now shuttered) Brown Sugar Kitchen outpost; a tour of Thomas Keller's Napa Valley restaurants alongside the chef himself; a lunch with Dominique Crenn at her eponymous restaurant Petit Crenn; cooking with Tony Gemignani at Family House San Francisco; as well as a tour of some Mission favorites with J. Kenji López-Alt. There's even a — perhaps some would say ill-advised — boat trip in the bay with chef Mourad Lahlou and friends (but more on that below).
Rosenthal discussed his recent visit to San Francisco, which local restaurants he wished could have been included on the show, and more in a phone interview with SFGATE.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
SFGATE: How did you approach selecting locations for San Francisco?
Phil Rosenthal: Some are favorite places that I love because I've been to San Francisco many times, and then there are discoveries that I had no idea about. But because of my love of food and restaurants, and even getting involved in the restaurant business, I have gotten to know and become friends with some of the world's great chefs. And two of them happen to be in the San Francisco area. I'm with the godfather and godmother of the way we eat in America, really, when you think about it: [Thomas] Keller and Alice [Waters]. It's kind of amazing that they're both right there, and I just loved the sequences with them, because I think they were presented in a way maybe you haven't seen before.
SFGATE: You're right. I think it is a first to see Thomas Keller exploring all of his restaurants in Napa. How did you guys decide to do this sort of trip through his restaurants?
Phil Rosenthal: Because I haven't seen [them all], and in the time that he's been there, he's created this little Keller Land — and I don't know if people know that. I know they know the French Laundry and if you live up there, you know the other ones, but I don't think the world knows that he built this very diverse empire. I didn't even have time to [show La Calenda]. We filmed there and that'll be a bonus scene on YouTube.
SFGATE: What is your approach to selecting food locations for each episode? How do you and your team dial into how to represent a city? It's kind of daunting, isn't it?
Phil Rosenthal: Absolutely. Take New York, for example. I'm from New York and the goal is to make the definitive show about that place, right? And how do I make the definitive show about New York? That was really daunting. How do I do it? And I quickly realized I can't, but I can make my New York. And so that's what you see in that particular episode.
For San Francisco, it's a combination of things I know that I want to show you and that I love, like the Ferry Building. When I come to San Francisco, I want to stay right near the Ferry Building, because that's my home base. I can always get something to eat, I love exploring the new places that come in, and it becomes exponentially greater when the farmers' market is there a couple of times a week. To me, that's heaven. The setting is beautiful, the people are great, the freshest, greatest food, the community, it's all there in this open market centered around this incredible food court that the Ferry Building became. I love it so much.
So that I know, but then there's places I don't know. And I leave it to experts like Kenji [López-Alt] to show me around and to explore. Like the Mission — there's places in the Mission I had no idea about and so that was so much fun. What I'm trying to do is one thing: get you to travel. So if that's the goal, how you're probably going to see a place is you're going to go on vacation. So what makes a vacation? Places to eat, things to do, you want to learn a little bit about the place without getting a boring class, right? You want to learn what's interesting.
Then I'm looking for mostly affordable place to eat with the occasional splurge, because that's what you would do on your vacation. But I'll be honest: I have these kinds of epiphanies. It doesn't have to be the four-star meal. You can get just as much of an explosive surprise and joy from a hot dog or a taco — for me, anyway. Delicious is delicious.
SFGATE: Do you have any other favorites of San Francisco that maybe didn't make it into the episode? Or maybe if you could do a second episode, who would you want to include?
Phil Rosenthal: Oh, there's so many things. I didn't do any Chinese, did I? I didn't do Chinatown. I didn't do Hog Island Oyster in the Ferry Building, right? That's one of my favorites. I never go [to San Francisco] without going there, because the oysters are so fantastic. But I did oysters at Swan [Oyster Depot]. So that was that, and in all my travels, I'd never been there. I hope they they're happy with their portrayal because it was shot so beautifully, which I had nothing to do with, and it was just joyous to be there. I loved it. And, of course, my old friend from college lives nearby, so that was really a treat for me to do it.
There's so many places I didn't go to. I think [one] restaurant is Saison. I haven't been there, but people are telling me that's the number one restaurant in the country. I also love, and it just burned down, the Restaurant at Meadowood. I think that's every bit as good as the French laundry, and I can't wait for them to rebuild that because that guy's a super talent, Christopher Kostow. Love his food, love that place. He's a genius.
I could make a list like this for every place we've been. We have less than an hour to try to stuff as much in as we can without making it seem rushed. When I watch other shows that have other agendas, sometimes you don't even get a chance for the food to land on the table before they're cutting away to the next thing. So I like to slow it down, really get into it. I find that it will actually keep your attention. This goes back to when I was doing sitcoms: A lot of sitcoms, they rush from place to place, changing sets and changing costumes as fast as can be. So many things, so many images flashing in front of our eyes, that at the end of the show, you think you were entertained. I call it "the illusion of entertainment," because things are going rapid fire. But that's not the same as getting involved. If the content is worthy enough, you stay with it, you stay in the interesting conversation or you stay in the interesting shot of the food. It could be anything, but it's vital to me ... that things land so that your brain has a chance to register them.
Phil Rosenthal, host of Netflix's "Somebody Feel Phil," in San Francisco.
NetflixSFGATE: Take us behind the scenes. What is your filming schedule like when you visit a city?
Phil Rosenthal: We allot a week for each city, probably six days of filming. We do a lot of preparatory work. A lot of it I can do myself just on my phone, Googling best restaurants in San Francisco or writing down the places that I want us to explore. I'll send it to my brother, the producer, and he's in charge of the team over at [Zero Point Zero], which is based in New York; it's the production company that actually did all four [Anthony] Bourdain shows.
So I'm in very good hands, and they have a team of researchers and fixers around the world because of Bourdain, because he was on for 12 years. Once in a while, you might see some of the same people showing up to show me around on trips. So I take advantage of their research. They tell me what's new and cool, and situations that I might like, or maybe situations that I won't like, but I should do anyway because it might either be funny or just get me out of my comfort zone. And sometimes I will say, "I don't want to do that." And my brother will say, "You're doing it." And I will say, "You don't tell me what to do." And he says, "OK, be a jerk. Don't do this, but it'll be boring if you don't." And then I say, '"All right, goddammit, I'll do it." And then I do it. And then he's right.
SFGATE: It sounds like you're very specifically talking about the boat scene in the San Francisco episode.
Phil Rosenthal: Well, I had just come off a really nasty bout of — my first bout in all my travels on the show, not in life, but on the show — food poisoning. And we lost a day of filming, because I was [he trails off] ... horrible. And we all know what that is. And I can't tell you which place I got it from, because that [was] our first day of shooting, I think I went to three or four places. I have no idea what it could have been. And now we're starting the next morning and the first thing he's got for me, is boat on the bay. We're gonna go under the Golden Gate. I'm like, "Just the idea of getting on of boat right now is making me weak in the knees." And he said, "Use it."
SFGATE: Was he there on location with you?
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
SFGATE: So he got to witness your torture in person.
Phil Rosenthal: Oh, yes, he's never been happier. But the truth is I'm very lucky because he knows me better than anybody. And he knows he would never endanger me. Although maybe he would, I'm thinking of a couple of times ... [he pauses before chuckling]. I get to travel the world with my best friend, really. And I have somebody who, as my producer, is really looking out for me. And we laugh, we laugh.
SFGATE: You very famously come from the world of sitcoms with "Everybody Loves Raymond." What made you want to jump into the world of food travel documentary?
Phil Rosenthal: I kept failing at the world of sitcoms after "Raymond." I thought that I would naturally do another one, and [the studios] didn't want it. And I tried every year and they didn't want it. They kept saying, "Oh, we love you. We love 'Raymond.' We can't wait to work with you." And they said that until they would hear my ideas. And I realized that the business while we were doing "Raymond" for nine years had changed drastically. It was not the same world anymore. Listen, it was tough to get "Raymond" on when we got it up, because it was such an innocuous-seeming show, meaning not hip and edgy, not sexy in any way, just what has always proven to be the building blocks of television, these family sitcoms. So we like to think that we were doing an adult version of a family sitcom without being blunt or obvious or vulgar. And by the time the show was over, the world had become more blunt and obvious and vulgar. And so it was hard to sell anything else.
I thought, "If I'm going to beat my head against this show business wall, why don't I pick this spot in the wall that I would really, really love and maybe change it up a little?" Because the world was telling me something. It's not the same anymore and if you don't adapt and if you don't change and you don't follow your heart, then you might not succeed. So it took me 10 years to get this show. They just don't hand these out to anybody. When people say, "How do I get that job?" well, you can struggle and fail and beg and borrow and steal and try every way you can, but it might take you 10 years. Now, if you were to ask me, "Was it worth it?" I would say yes.
Now, I don't know when I'll get to do it again. We finished filming in January. We got it in just under the wire. So there's two things: I have no idea when the world will open back up again. None of us do. I would like to think that maybe in a year, we'll get some semblance of normalcy. We need to have a vaccine that we can trust in the world. We can't just take the first one off the truck that they might try to shove on us. I tell people, I don't even update my phone until I see what happens to everybody else.
But the other thing is I have no idea if Netflix will want any more. I really don't. They seem to want new things all the time. It's very rare. They only daily renew 5% of their existing shows. Now, luckily this last season, season three was our most popular so far, so the audience keeps growing. So that's nice. And I think we we've gotten that top five. We became one of their top five unscripted series for season three. So season four seems to be on track to be even more popular because — and we can thank COVID for one thing — more people are watching Netflix. But you know, people [are watching] vicariously, because we can't travel any other way.
SFGATE: I was going to ask you about the timing of the shooting. Watching the San Francisco episode felt like a time capsule in a way, because you're seeing everyone hugging and without masks. It feels like a different world.
Phil Rosenthal: And yet it was just so recent. It was just a few months. It's amazing, isn't it, how quickly things can be taken away. It's really a lesson that we're all being forced to learn about how temporal everything is, how things can be gone in an instant that you take for granted. My joke is that when the world is returned to us, we will be so grateful and so happy — and that feeling is going to last two weeks and then we will be back to complaining. That's just people.
I watched the show, too, and I go, "Oh, remember when I could dance out in the street with the people in Rio and hug them and eat with them and just see my friends and be in a restaurant?" Yes, I feel that kind of melancholy, but here's what I want to impart to anyone reading this: This will end. This will end, this [pandemic] time, and the world will be returned to us. And what you should do with this feeling as you watch the show is what I hope you do when you've watched the show in the past. Look at the stuff that looks good to you and plan a trip! Because what makes life good is having things to look forward to.
SFGATE: You're always encouraging people to travel. What has travel brought to you in your life and how has it enriched how you view things?
Phil Rosenthal: I love this question. So I always say that what I've learned in all my travels starting when I was 23, [which] is when I first traveled anywhere, I went to Europe and it blew my mind. And the reason it blew my mind is because the nature of travel, what happens to you is it changes your perspective. And that's something you carry with you the rest of your life. So in other words, if I'd never been anywhere, right, and I go to, let's say, Paris, and I'm walking down the street for the first time in Paris. And I'm marveling at the trees on the Boulevard. "Look at these trees, look at the thought that went into this and the care that goes into maintaining them and keeping them, because they care about beautiful here. Never seen anything like it. Oh my God." And all the other experiences that I'm having for the first time are now in my head forever. It changes you because you see another way of life for better and worse, by the way.
But I came home to my apartment in Washington Heights in New York, and I walked down the street and I started to notice those trees. And I said, "Hmm. You know, we have beautiful trees here, too. Look at the thought that went into these. I always took them for granted." But because I now had something to compare it to and understand that this has been planned, that our Central Park in New York was planned, it wasn't just some earth that was left alone while the city grew around it ... it was planned like a work of art. And so every street and every tree that's planted, had thought behind it. Well, that's a new perspective on life, right? So that has stayed with me forever. And so as important as it is, I think, for you or everyone you know to travel and be an ambassador — and in today's world, just by being half-nice, you're a great ambassador for America, right? Just be a half-decent person and you'll be beloved and you'll surprise people around the world. So that's your duty as an American to represent — but what you get in return, I think is invaluable.
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