By and large, the key to a successful food and travel show is its host. Stanley Tucci’s Italian series, for example, is like being led around a city by someone charming enough to get you seats at all the best spots. Anthony Bourdain’s, meanwhile, could show you all the backstreet hole-in-the-wall places where local people actually eat.
And then there’s Somebody Feed Phil, on Netflix. For four years – or more if you count its PBS precursor, I’ll Have What Phil’s Having – the show has operated on a simple premise: dropping the world’s most delighted man into some of the best food towns on earth, and watching as he struggles to comprehend that he actually gets to do this for a living. It’s deliberately lightweight and mainstream and, thanks to its host, Philip Rosenthal, incredibly popular. Not for nothing is his production company called Lucky Bastards.
