Somebody feed Phil falafel
Netflix original series to feature episode set in TA
Phil Rosenthal is always hungry. And, with a seemingly unlimited budget, he picks up on a whim and travels around the globe to find his next meal.
When Rosenthal’s latest TV series, Somebody Feed Phil, debuts on Netflix on Friday, he’ll be hitting up Lisbon, Saigon, Mexico City, New Orleans, Bangkok – and Tel Aviv.
Of course, Rosenthal couldn’t help but venture outside the city limits during his trip to Israel, including a stop in Acre to visit the famed Uri Buri restaurant. Perhaps he just didn’t want to title the episode “Israel”?
In addition to hanging out with Uri Buri’s proprietor, the impressively bearded Uri Jeremias, Rosenthal meets up with a few other familiar culinary faces. He tours a Tel Aviv market with foodie and Master Chef judge Michal Ansky, and chows down with chef and cookbook author Michael Solomonov – who’s based in Philadelphia but leads regular foodie tours of his native Israel.
And while the cuisine in the show is irresistible, so is Rosenthal’s infectious enthusiasm for food, travel and meeting new people.
Rosenthal hasn’t always made his money eating. He is best known for being the creator, writer and executive producer of the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. In 2015 he started a food travelogue show for PBS called I’ll Have What Phil’s Having, which ran for one season. But Rosenthal was lured away from public television and toward the deep pockets of Netflix, which renamed the show Somebody Feed Phil.
And while Rosenthal travels around the globe, he’s still a good Jewish boy who doesn’t forget to check in with his parents via videochat in every episode.
“Ma, do you know what that is?” he says in the trailer for the series, holding up a fruit to his laptop camera. “This is called a mangosteen.” “Mango-what?” his mother replies. “Mangosteen. It’s like a Jewish mango, mangosteen.”