oh great, would you look at this? oh my god
tuna juice! oh my god! actor ray romano rose to fame thanks to the hit sitcom "everybody
loves raymond." and among those who love him, his former boss, producer phil rosenthal. they talk with our doctor jon lapook
about food, television and friendship the bees seem to be trying to get at us but
they really seem to be going for my face. hello! phil rosenthal has one of the best jobs
in the world. well phil i'm so glad to meet you oh we're hugging folks. oh i love it. as the
creator and star of the hit netflix series "somebody feed phil" - we're just dancing -
rosenthal travels almost everywhere and eats just about everything. oh my god, look at this.
it's already dead. of course it's dead. don't think is is alive. but it is very moving. yeah
but it's the muscles. we go to a fabulous place on the earth and i try to get you to come there
by showing you the best places there to eat. hello sir. i take it you've done this before. no? please
sit down please. there's no more mind expanding thing we can do than travel. it literally changes
your way of thinking. it changes your perspective. wherever i am in the world if it's time to go out
to eat with my wife and we don't know where to go, i text phil. hi, i'm ray and i live here in long
island. rosenthal and his buddy actor ray romano met in 1996, when rosenthal created wrote and was
executive producer of "everybody loves raymond." they took me from new york and they had set
up 10 meetings with potential showrunners, and let's tell the true story. you were the
second one. yeah, but the first guy turned it down. yes. so i went with phil yeah. isn't
that nice? you really know why? sure sure i know i totally know. the show ran for nine seasons on
cbs. i'm gonna give you the whole half a sandwich how's that? which is how the idea for phil
rosenthal's current travel show began 25 years ago while they were making the sitcom. i can honestly
say it's his fault. i asked him what are you going to do on your hiatus that break between season one
and season two? and you remember you were going to jersey shore where we always go right. and i
said oh that's nice. have you ever been to europe? and he said no and i said why not? and you
know what you said? i said i'm not interested in other places. [LAUGHS] art imitated life. a
light bulb went off. we got to do that episode. we got to do that episode where we send him with
that attitude - free trip to italy! i don't know. i'm not really interested in other cultures. rosenthal wrote two episodes that
explored romano's stated lack of desire to travel beyond his beloved jersey shore. can
you believe this? it's nice. the water yeah. and his eventual transformation. raymond first
notices a beautiful flower stand.and then you're walking alone, you're by yourself, and you run
into two kids who are kicking a soccer ball. comes my way and i kind of give it back to them, and
then they actually engage me to play with them, kick it around with them. it's one of my
favorite things we've ever done on the show. and finally raymond buys a slice of real italian
pizza. this is like the best pizza i ever had man. you like more? hell yes i want more. i love it
so much. it's everything i love about travel. how your mind literally gets changed. it's
like they know how to live here don't you think? don't you think it's kind of beautiful
here? we know what happened in the episode but what happened to you in real life? we
stayed in italy and we flew to sicily to visit my wife's hometown. so we spent a week
in this little village in the mountainside. the stuff we did in that episode i was living
in real life. we were in a car this big, they were feeding us from their the food
they grew, you know it's just seeing goodness from people who don't look like you sound like
you you know there's like this common denominator that you realize people are good all over.
so i see this happen to him and i think, what if i could do this for other
people? rosenthal held on to the idea and started his travel and food show in 2018.
how hungry are you? i'll taste everything. okay. i got some goat noodles. i love goat. i
think goat is the most underrated meat. do you ever ask a producer to taste something
first? nope nope, i just jump in like an idiot. and when something's amazing, yeah, i share it
with everyone. right that's what i was going to ask. it's also the secret to why i'm not
400 pounds it's because i taste everything i've finished nothing share everything.
he is especially fond of a chef he met in thailand. he's like a pilot. it's a
michelin-starred shack, unbelievabl.e a crab omelet there's like a pound, a pound and
a half of freshly shucked crab. it's probably the most expensive street food in the world.
i think it's 50 for this omelet. and it's so friggin delicious. you never see it in america
because it would be prohibitive, it would be two to three hundred dollars here. rosenthal has just
finished a book published by simon & schuster, a division of paramount global, to document his
travels and the best recipes he's discovered. it's these artisans these craftsmen who take such
care and pride. it's their national heritage, their personal family history that's in every bite
of the food you're getting and i swear to you you can taste it. as for romano, in the decades since
"everybody loves raymond" - hey what do you say we just head south together great yeah hey jump up
on my back and relax the whole way wow - he has continued to act in comedies and dramas. you know
i don't uh i don't care whether he did it or not that makes no difference to me. yeah. i'm here
to defend you. and he just finished directing and starring in a dramedy called "somewhere
in queens," which he also co-wrote, once again drawing on memories of his family. do they yell
and do they scream and are they loud? yeah there's that love underneath it. you can't deny it there's
a bond that can't be broken. which also perfectly describes ray romano's bond with phil rosenthal.
pretty humbling now for me to go to dinner with him and when people come up for to talk or an
autograph, it's for this guy now. that's crazy!
