Sometimes, it’s best to BYO napkins.
In this excerpt from Somebody Feed Phil the Book: Untold Stories, Behind-the-Scenes Photos, and Favorite Recipes: A Cookbook, TV host and Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal breaks down the recipe for a perfect trip.
I’m often asked how we choose a location to feature on my Netflix show, Somebody Feed Phil. We’ve only done 28 episodes so far, so I’ve only scratched the surface of the earth. If my mission is to get you to travel, I thought I’d start with Earth’s Greatest Hits. Buenos Aires fits that.
It’s always somewhere I had wanted to go but I knew very little about — other than I’d heard there’s a lot of great steak. Definitely an incentive. My preconception was that the streets would be filled with people tango-ing, and sure enough, people really do dance everywhere there. We saw people doing the tango in a shopping center. That’s a nice society.
The first Spanish explorers landed here in the sixteenth century, then European immigrants and later people from all over the world have fed this city ever since. You feel like you’re in Europe with the incredible architecture, the beautiful parks and mature trees that line the sidewalks, and the grand, wide avenues. It’s spectacular. Why aren’t we all going here?
I’ve said that I always rely on locals for the best advice. I wouldn’t have necessarily ordered that dulce de leche pancake at El Obrero, the bodegón, if chef Soledad Nardelli hadn’t told me I had to try it. (By the way, I did manage to take a jar of dulce de leche home — we wrapped it with bubble wrap like it was an antique glass sculpture. It survived. Until I got it home and it met my family.)
Being open to something when you travel also applies to going somewhere that might be outside your comfort zone, or even just a place you’re not usually all that interested in going. I’ve probably met people at a bar three times in my life; I want to go someplace where you can actually hear the person you’re talking to. But I went to a bar called Los Galgos, because I’d heard how great it was. It’s like going back to a different time period in Buenos Aires…and you can drink a negroni while you sit through your history lesson.
When you’re meeting people, there’s also got to be chemistry. I’ve done enough of this type of show in smaller versions to know what I didn’t want to do. I’m not a chef, I’m not an expert. I’m a tourist like you. I think one reason that works is how we shot the show. The one thing I did insist on was to have two cameras. If we had just brought one camera, you’d see me talking, then the camera would have to turn around and we’d get the other person talking afterward, and the conversation would be constructed in editing. You lose the honest reactions. And real human interaction is the most important part of the show.
Another thing I’ve learned is that sitting in the kitchen or at a bar or diner counter with the chef, owner, waiter, or whoever you’re there to see, is way better than sitting at a formal table. At a table, the meal has to be so amazing, or the conversation has to be so scintillating, that it carries the scene. A lot more spontaneity and interaction happens when you’re at the counter or the bar.
Chef Gonzalo Alderete at Perón Perón gave us the perfect example of what you hope happens on a show. It was a quintessential scene for me. In that moment, you have such great material that’s so entertaining and fun and provocative. You meet a real character. But when you get there, you have no idea if you’re going to click. By the end of the scene, he’s so comfortable, he turns and looks right at the camera and talks to you. I loved it. You get a little history, a tiny bit of conflict, a little risqué material, just a great buddy feeling — and spectacular food.
Probably the single scariest thing for me on the entire show was learning the tango in front of the viewers. Even more than when I jumped into icy water in Ireland, especially since there are no expectations of your performance when you’re jumping into cold water. I am not a dancer. I’ve never taken a dance lesson in my life. And at my ripe old age, I was completely nervous, anxiety-ridden, shy, and scared of embarrassment.
Luckily, my instructor was the lovely and very kind Cecilia Piccinni. She is a professional dancer with years of experience who would now be dancing with a putz. We had about an hour-long lesson where we practiced some rudimentary things. I think at the end of the show, we looked nice. And when I say “we,” I mean she looked nice.
By the way, the single best thing I ate in Buenos Aires was a steak sandwich down the street from the hotel. It’s not something I’d think to order. The meat isn’t usually the best cut in our steak sandwiches. What we get in the United States can be tough and chewy, but there, you bite it and your teeth melt through it like a cloud. And the flavor is so delicious, the sweet and hot peppers. That was the one thing in Buenos Aires we ate that all of us wanted again. That’s why you see it on the show. Some of the food in those calls with my parents came from places we went with the crew when we weren’t filming.
A pizza place Donato de Santis took me to, called La Mezzetta, is the one of the few times on the show that you see me being not completely positive. It wasn’t about the fugazzeta, the local style of pizza — that was great. But in the pizza scene, I’m holding this grease bomb and the first thing I’m thinking is, “I need a napkin.” So I get a napkin, and it’s as if someone took one of those old black-and-white notebooks and tore a page out of it.
Usually I’m open to the local culture; we have a lot to learn in America. Not so with these napkins. I’ve accumulated a certain set of rules. For example, a hotel is only as good as the water pressure. And now I have strong feelings about napkins. Turns out a lot of Argentinians told me later that they feel the exact same way about those napkins and really related to that scene. Consider it a public service. (In case you’re wondering, the toilet paper in Argentina is way better than the napkins. I almost went into the bathroom to get something that might be more absorbent.)
The show’s last scene, when we’re having dinner at that traditional asado, really shows how genuine the connections and friendships can be that you make when you travel. The greatest hits of the episodes were all there: Gonzalo, Rodolfo, Donato, Allie, even my saint of a tango teacher, Cecilia. And the food kept coming — meat, and meat, and more meat. (I’m still convinced they feed the cows something different here.) Then Donato hands over a present, the paper-thin napkins from the pizza place. I made some new friends from the other side of the world.
Argentinians are warm, generous, and so funny — kindred spirits. They will get you right away — and that makes you feel like you can do anything.
Excerpted from Somebody Feed Phil the Book: Untold Stories, Behind-the-Scenes Photos, and Favorite Recipes: A Cookbook. Copyright © 2022 By Phil Rosenthal and Jenn Garbee. Photography Copyright © 2022 By Richard Rosenthal and Ed Anderson. Reproduced By Permission of Simon Element, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster. All Rights Reserved.
