Phil Rosenthal explores Boston eats in latest ‘Somebody Feed Phil' season

Boston Globe

6 hours ago

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While filming in the Hub, he visited some of the city's most innovative chefs and a few of its tourist traps, including an obligatory saunter through Quincy Market.
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Not bashful about the fact that his show
'I'm decidedly not cool, and certainly not an expert,' he says. 'I'm decidedly, even proudly, a tourist. But I am a curious tourist, which is how I think tourists should be.'
Stops along his Boston itinerary include
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Phil Rosenthal, right, prepares to eat oysters at Neptune Oyster in an episode of "Somebody Feed Phil."
Netflix
'I'm anxious that we got it right,' says Rosenthal, who just announced a return visit to Boston for a live appearance at the Wilbur (September 10).
His neuroses are a big part of the show's charm. Near the end of the episode, as he prepares to lean into a lamb shank at La Royal, he laments that he's already stuffed.
'The great ones play in pain,' he says.
Rosenthal, who is 65, has a wide-eyed sense of enthusiasm for everything and everyone he encounters. It's inherent to his personality, he says, but it's also something he has cultivated in his professional life.
Before he created
'We do not provide breakfast for you,' the note concluded.
Shocked by the pettiness of the rebuke, Rosenthal decided that if he was ever lucky enough to become a showrunner, 'we're gonna have milk on our cereal.'
'My attitude is if you put nice out there, you get nice back,' he says. 'Some small act of kindness could change someone's life.'
For the Boston episode, he and his crew made a detour to Rhode Island, where they visited Sherry Pocknett, the first Indigenous woman to be honored with a James Beard Award. Rosenthal was clearly smitten with her and the food her daughter Jade served up at their restaurant, Sly Fox Den Too. The corn chowder topped with smoked mussels is 'kinda genius,' he says.
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After Pocknett told him she rarely got out of the kitchen, he insisted she come join his group at
Since the taping, Pocknett's restaurant
Over the show's seven-year run, dozens of restaurants have experienced a surge in their business after being featured on 'Somebody Feed Phil.' After he dined at a picturesque seafood cafe overlooking the harbor in Lisbon, he brought his wife back for a vacation.
He called the restaurant, and the owner gushed about the debt he owed Rosenthal for featuring his business. Rosenthal mentioned that he happened to be back in town and would love to stop by, and the guy replied, 'I'm sorry, we're full.'
'I couldn't get in,' Rosenthal says with a laugh. 'I screwed myself.'
The episode wraps up with a Zoom visit from his friend Jane Fonda.
'She's a gift to the world, I think,' he says. 'Talk about walking the walk.' She calls him the 'Jewish Tinkerbell,' he explains with another laugh.
Fonda is one of many people who have told him that they love the show for its lightheartedness and cultural engagement.
'She says she watches it every night,' he says. 'It soothes her, and it makes her feel good about the world.'
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There's 'a dearth' of shows with those qualities right now, Rosenthal says.
'My show was never meant to be a political statement, but because the world is the way it is today, to be embracing of other cultures is somehow political. Which is really stupid. To me, it's only human.'
During the time he spent with Pocknett, she told him about the Wampanoag tribe's first encounter with the pilgrims at Plymouth. The new arrivals were struggling with the climate and the environment, she says.
What did the Native Americans do? Rosenthal asks. Her answer, he says, makes the scene 'one of my favorites I've ever done.'
'We were human,' Pocknett says matter-of-factly. 'We helped them.'
James Sullivan can be reached at