Phil Rosenthal - Somebody Feed Phil the Book: Untold Stories, Behind-the-Scenes Photos and Favorite Recipes: A Cookbook

Somebody Feed Phil the Book

Netflix: A Netflix Series

I hope Ive been a good traveling companion.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

IN FEBRUARY 2019, Phil and I organized by text message a meeting in Los Angeles. I had no doubt he would choose a cool spot, but when I read his last message, saying he was going to take me to an avant-garde place, I cringed. I was on a forty-eight-hour trip from Italy to cook over Oscars weekend, and between the jet lag, interviews, and other engagements, I didnt have much room left for avant-garde.

Phil and I had met years earlier at the Albinelli Market in Modena. As we walked from stall to stall, I understood immediately that this guy was interested in one thing onlyGood Food. You can put all kinds of labels on gastronomic movements and styles of cooking, but in my book, food always falls into one of two categories: Good Food or Bad Food. It didnt matter to Phil if he was eating a sandwich in a bar, a mushroom directly from the vendors basket, or a meal at a three-star Michelin restaurant. He wanted to taste it all and to know everything he could about why that bite was better than the last.

When we pulled up to Sumo Dog on Western Avenue, which was attached to a dive bar, a big smile came over my face. The Korean hot dog stand famous for its Asian-flavored hot dogs and collaborations with LA chefs was my kind of avant-garde. Phil ordered everything. We passed hot dogs around, comparing one to another. The conversation was rich with gourmet exclamations like Oooooh! Oh my God! No way! and Try this one! Then Nancy Silvertons dog came along, with its American-Italian notes: American Wagyu beef, Calabrian sausage, and Caciocavallo cheese. Everyone ate in silence. Too good for words.

A year later I was back in LA for the Oscars again. It would be the last trip I took before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Unable to travel outside Italy, I became quite nostalgic about that kind of avant-garde curbside adventure. The shared hot dogs, the unmasked laughs, and the ease of gathering, which we took for granted at the time. Thank you, Phil, for this lasting memory.

The recipe Ive shared, , has nothing to do with hot dogs. It has everything to do with the quality of the ingredients and, even more important, the quality of the ideas.

And thats exactly why Somebody Feed Phil is such an addictive television show. Phil never just scratches the surface or simply reports on what he sees and eats. I can testify from various experiences on set that every moment is unscripted, real, and raw. Phil dives in and begins getting to know the guests, the places, and the food through his curiosity and questions. When Phil shows up, the pressure is on to show him your favorite food angles, big and small, and the secret flavors, ingredients, and customs that make your life delicious. And in return, Phil shows you his favorite hideouts and hot dog stands. The relationships we form around food are some of the most meaningful (just think about our attachment to our mothers), so when you have Good Food and Good Conversation at the table, there is always magic.

Somebody Feed Phil the Book brings to life the dynamic intersection of cultures, people, landscapes, ingredients, and ideas. Phil shares not only his travels and culinary adventures but also the recipes he loves most so that everyone can experience extraordinary places and fabulous peopleand delicious food. And that, really, is what the best cookbooks do. They animate places weve visited or read about or dream about traveling to someday; they remind us of people weve met, cooked with, and broken bread with; and they connect us to one another, no matter how great the distance between us.

MASSIMO BOTTURA

W ELCOME EVERYBODY, to Somebody Feed Phil the Book. Im trying to do two things here: make a great companion book to the series, and give you some of the best recipes from our favorite chefs and places on the show.

Let me make this clearthese are not my recipes. Im not a chef. I dont have the temperament or talent to make anything from this book. All I care about is whether the recipes here taste as close as possible to what I ate around the world, and they do. Butand this is the message of the book and the showyou should still go to these places and try the originals. One thing Ive learned after eating things all over the world: a dish never tastes the same at home as it does when youre traveling. Because its all connected: the sights, the sounds, the smells, the people youre with, the experienceare all connected to your tongue. So the best thing that could come from this book is that at some point you drop it and call your travel agent.

My favorite part about doing the show has been the people Ive met, not just during filming but also those of you who watch it and reach out to me. Its been my calling card to the world and one of the greatest pleasures of my life. It feels like a fantasy, but what Im telling you is that everything you see me doing is 100 percent real, and you can do it, too. In fact, the name of the show could be If That Guy Can Do It, Anyone Can.

My parents werent exactly adventurous people. When my brother, Richard, and I were young, they moved from a small New York City apartment to Rockland County, New York. Moving to the suburbs was understandably all the adventure they needed after the Holocaust. Rockland was a nice, safe place to raise their family. In our neighborhood, every house was built by the same company and looked exactly the same, other than the color of the paint. (One advantage: when you went to a friends house, you didnt have to ask where the bathroom was.)

Delicious meals and travel were not the priorities in our house. Safety and affordability were. But my parents did buy Time Life Books The Great Cities series, twenty-five volumes highlighting incredible places: Athens, Venice, Paris, Istanbul, San Francisco They intended for Richard and me to use them as a geographic encyclopedia, but to me, the pages were filled with magical places that seemed better than where I was living. And we never went to any of them.

But when I was nine, my parents announced we were going to my cousins bar mitzvah. The great thing was this cousin did not live in New York, but in a faraway place with a mysterious name that sounded like a lost city: Atlanta. I could not have been more excited. I dont remember a single thing about the bar mitzvah. What I do remember is not long after we got there, my cousins took Richard and me to a store that was open from seven in the morning until eleven oclock at night. It looked like a store for astronauts, filled with candy and food in wrappers, and a magical machine like some sort of carnival soft-serve ice cream dispenser. You pulled the handle and out came a Coke, only thanks to cutting-edge science it was transformed into the most amazing thing: a sweet, cold slushy food/drink. I thought, This place is great! I love Atlanta! I had two Slurpees a day for the three days we were there, and the idea of trying new foods, and celebrating other cultures, was born.