I spoke to Phil Rosenthal about food and travel ahead of his UK tour

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Award-winning author, producer and creator of hit TV shows Phil Rosenthal talks favourite cities ahead of his UK live tour for 2025.

Award-winning author, producer and creator of hit TV shows Phil Rosenthal will embark on a live tour of the UK in April. The creator of Everybody Loves Raymond and Somebody Feed Phil will share insights into his career which spans forty years in the entertainment industry.

Before he was the host of the hit Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil, Rosenthal created the comedy Everybody Loves Raymond and served as the showrunner and executive producer for all nine years of the show’s run. During its original run, the show was nominated for over 70 Emmy Awards, and won 15 awards, including two for Best Comedy Series.

Somebody Feed Phil is one of Netflix’s most popular food and travel shows and released its seventh season earlier this year, which included a visit to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Following its popularity, it has been renewed for an eighth season and is one of Netflix’s longest unscripted series.

I spoke to Phil about his favourite cities, the tour and how he embarked on his food cities around the world. He started off explaining that there were a few attempts at moving this direction before Somebody Feed Phil. Already established as a successful television writer, “people don’t like it if you change lanes” he said, but he thought he could bring a new sense of humour to discovering cuisines and meeting people.

Drawing on a production company that had already worked on Anthony Bourdain’s television series, Phil has access to local knowledge and food fixers on a global scale. That allows him to be able to delve into the life of a destination and its something he finds exciting.

Despite being born in Queens and raised in New York with every cuisine in the world on his doorstep, he wasn’t naturally a curious eater, although he has taken to the role. When he was young, “we couldn’t afford to go to all the wonderful places New York has to offer. And so I ate at home every night and the food was not world class. It wasn’t even very good, but I just thought that’s what food was.

“When you grow up in your family and you don’t have exposure to many things, you think that’s the way the world is. And it wasn’t until I left that house that first of all, I had food with flavour, but second, that there was a whole world of food to discover from people from all over the world. First in New York, and then when I went on my first trip to Europe when I was in my twenties, I’d never been anywhere. And that really blew my mind.”

Food, Phil says, has brought a sense of connection in his journey to new places, and in the global audience that follows him. It also means more types of cooking are being discovered: “I find that the world is so wonderful now, and I’m going to attribute this to the internet where a kid in Iowa, in the United States can see what a chef in Paris is doing and learn from it and emulate it using their local ingredients. And it’s made the world fantastic in that you can find a great meal anywhere.”

“I find that food is the great connector, and then laughs are the cement. Because if you and I meet over a meal, right away, no matter where you’re from, it’s a human thing that we all do and we all, we look forward to meal time. Sometimes it’s the only bright spot in a person’s day is that break they have to eat. And if the food is then any good at all, now we’re happy. And then if we share a laugh now we’re friends and we might eat again. So to me, that’s the secret of life. It’s the secret to peace in the world. It’s everything.

You can watch our full conversation above, or on YouTube. Tickets to An Evening With Phil Rosenthal are available here.