Latest news with #Bourdain
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Yahoo
Why Anthony Bourdain Loathed This Iconic American Sandwich
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Most folks have the odd food and drink bugaboo here and there. For some, it's the genetic quirk that makes cilantro taste like soap. Others simply have an antipathy toward olives, anchovies, and other such divisive items. The internationally renowned food world personality and occasional crime novelist Anthony Bourdain was particularly prickly about the club sandwich, which he compared to the terrorist network Al Qaeda (via the Los Angeles Times) in his 2016 cookbook "Appetites." This relatable bit of vexation was particularly focused on the hotel room service staple's over-reliance on carbohydrates. "I'm really irritated by that useless middle slice of bread on the club sandwich," Bourdain told the Los Angeles Times on the occasion of "Appetites'" publication. "It's been there forever; it's not a trend. It's lasted for decades and why, when we can so easily dispense with it," he said. Hypotheses abound — maybe it's to fortify the towering sandwich's architecture, maybe it's to make it more sharable, maybe it's merely an aesthetic choice — but we've yet to see a recipe that totally justifies all that extra rye or sourdough. The good news is that you can actually eschew those pesky middle bits. And the club sandwich is even more adaptable from there. Read more: The Most Iconic Sandwich In Every State Bourdain Wasn't The Only Chef Who Had A Bone To Pick With Club Sandwiches Another late culinary icon, James Beard, also hated the "modern" club sandwich. Beard posited in his own 1972 book "James Beard's American Cookery" that the darn middle bread was actually a latter day addition to what had been a much more manageable sandwich. "Nowdays the sandwich is bastardized because it is usually made as a three-decker, which is not authentic," Beard wrote, adding the damning parenthetical, "whoever started that horror should be forced to eat three-deckers three times a day the rest of his life" (via What's Cooking America). Let that serve as the one-two punch of authority to skip the extra bread once and for all. Once you've gotten your previously Jenga-like sandwiches down to size, you should also feel empowered to build your club with chicken or turkey, (also a matter of much debate) or even use both at the same time. You can likewise make those clubs as hot or cold as you wish. Just make sure to pin them together with those festive, frilly toothpicks. That's one exchange that nobody should have to abide. Read the original article on Chowhound.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Old-School Sandwich Anthony Bourdain Couldn't Stand To Eat
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Anthony Bourdain — chef, television show host, and author — had no shortage of opinions when it came to food and dining. He was firm about which cuisines he considered underappreciated in the U.S., and offered plenty of great advice for how to find delicious meals in any city. However, some dishes were targeted by Bourdain's sharply honed disdain — and one of the most consistent targets of his culinary wrath was the seemingly innocuous old-school club sandwich. In his 2016 cookbook "Appetites," Bourdain famously expressed a strong dislike for the dish. He explained to the LA Times, "I'm really irritated by that useless middle slice of bread on the club sandwich. It's been there forever; it's not a trend. It's lasted for decades and why, when we can so easily dispense with it?" Bourdain's contempt for the club sandwich wasn't confined to one rant — it was a recurring theme in his fiery food commentary. As reported by Thrillist, in a notorious list titled "Crimes Against Food," he doubled down on his hatred, describing the sandwich's third slice of bread as an invention by "enemies of freedom" meant to "sap our will to live by ruining our sandwich experiences through 'tectonic slide.'" And in a 2016 interview with NPR, Bourdain again railed against the extra bread in a club sandwich, saying, "The third slice of bread on a club sandwich, I think, is a satanic invention." He was nothing if not consistent in his tastes. Read more: Foods Anthony Bourdain Hated With A Passion Bourdain's Many Sandwich-Based Beefs Anthony Bourdain was all about authenticity in food; he despised artifice. So a sandwich with extra bread easily slid into the category of overbuilt and underwhelming. But the club sandwich was not alone in his "Crimes Against Food" list. The brioche burger bun was another bread-based beef the chef had. "God is against the brioche bun," he wrote. "The hamburger bun is designed to ABSORB grease, not add greasiness to the experience." For Bourdain, burgers had an architectural logic: structurally sound, texturally balanced, and best served on a humble potato bun. Bourdain similarly hated Kobe burgers, deeming them "utterly fraudulent" when served in over-hyped restaurants or popular gathering spots for "bro's," along with his contempt for those who ordered them. Even eggs Benedict wasn't safe. That soft muffin served at brunch spots drew his ire: "The lazy cook toasts it under the broiler for a few seconds on one side, leaving the outer surface gummy and raw tasting and lacking the textural note your poached egg and Canadian bacon and sauce desperately need," he declared. Want more food knowledge? Sign up to our free newsletter where we're helping thousands of foodies, like you, become culinary masters, one email at a time. Read the original article on Food Republic.
Sydney Morning Herald
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Everyone used to love Raymond, now everyone feeds Phil Rosenthal
When Phil Rosenthal, host of the Netflix food and travel show, Somebody Feed Phil, and creator of the enduring sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond, began selling out live shows last year, no one was more surprised than Ray Romano. Romano, the sitcom's star, showed up at the Paramount concert hall on Long Island, New York, expecting to stir up excitement among fans and help out during the Q&A. No one had a question for him, he said; they just wanted to tell Rosenthal about their favourite places to eat in Lisbon, Portugal, or Nashville, Tennessee. 'How did this happen?' the actor asked me over the phone last week. 'I've been doing stand-up for 30 years. He goes to Poland and eats meatloaf and sells out theatres around the world?' Loading There is no shortage of armchair-travel television. But somehow, Rosenthal has broken through and become a global star. Season eight of his show, which features Sydney and Adelaide, dropped in June, making it one of the longest-running unscripted shows on Netflix. In August, he'll start a North American tour, and a second cookbook, Phil's Favourites – the first was a New York Times bestseller – will come out in November. The live shows Rosenthal did last year sold out not only in New York City and Los Angeles, but also in Melbourne, Glasgow, Brussels and Dublin. There's no cooking demo, no tight five minutes of stand-up. Just him. What's the appeal? 'I know it's not my looks,' he said at a sneak preview of the show's new season in Manhattan. Tall and skinny, quick and twinkly, he comes across like everyone's favourite uncle – the silly one, who makes quarters disappear up his nose. Or great-uncle, considering he's 65. Rosenthal is a sunny counterpart to his most famous predecessor, Anthony Bourdain, who carried a whiff of darkness on all his adventures. Bourdain explored Vietnam's colonial legacy and travelled down the Congo River, but you never saw him doing a happy dance after biting into a herring or an arepa. Loading In 2014, four years before Bourdain died, Rosenthal was lucky (and canny) enough to hire his production company, Zero Point Zero. That explains the high-quality visuals and research that go into Somebody Feed Phil. Like Bourdain's shows, it's respectful of culture and food and the people who produce it – but silly about almost everything else. Rosenthal makes fun of his brother, Richard, the showrunner; banters with the prime minister of Finland; and is always game to put on a Cirque du Soleil costume or chase a chicken. At the end of each episode, he invites every cook, cheesemaker, fisherman and whoever else worked on the show to dinner, usually followed by chocolate egg creams – one of very few things he knows how to make. (The recipes in his cookbooks are contributed by chefs.) As Rosenthal tells it, his love of food was born not at home, but in diners. For Everybody Loves Raymond, he transferred many details of his Jewish-American background to the Italian-American character Ray Barone – including his mother's terrible cooking, which was played for laughs. Loading But the background is more complicated than that. His parents spent their childhoods in Nazi Germany. Max's family fled to the United States in 1938, immediately after Kristallnacht; Helen's stayed, until she and her mother were sent to Gurs, a concentration camp in south-western France. As refugees, they were en route to the US in 1941 when their ship was diverted to Cuba, where they waited two years before being allowed into the country. That was enough adventure for one lifetime, it seemed: When Rosenthal was growing up in New City, a middle-class suburb north of New York City, he said, his parents weren't worried about expanding their horizons or their palates. He recalls the food his mother cooked was so bland that he first tasted garlic as an undergraduate at university. His father cared about only one dish: scrambled eggs. (True story: 'Are my eggs fluffy?' is carved on his tombstone.) But treats such as cheeseburgers and egg creams, Rosenthal said, made him curious about what other delights might be out there in the world. As an aspiring actor in New York City in the 1980s, he scrimped for months to pay for dinners at fancy restaurants. Later, he moved to Los Angeles, then offstage and into writing, and eventually into the kind of success that allowed him to eat anywhere in the world. Loading After Raymond ended in 2005, Rosenthal tried for a decade to get another sitcom off the ground, but to his surprise, 'nobody wanted it', he said. So he began travelling more and spending time with food experts such as Silverton, chef Thomas Keller and Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, who died in 2018. Rosenthal said Gold, whose groundbreaking work celebrated taco trucks and noodle joints as fiercely as white-tablecloth restaurants, gave him the words that still illuminate the greater purpose of a show like Somebody Feed Phil. By showing the world what other people eat, Rosenthal explained, Gold 'said he was trying to make all of us a little less afraid of our neighbours'.
The Age
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Everyone used to love Raymond, now everyone feeds Phil Rosenthal
When Phil Rosenthal, host of the Netflix food and travel show, Somebody Feed Phil, and creator of the enduring sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond, began selling out live shows last year, no one was more surprised than Ray Romano. Romano, the sitcom's star, showed up at the Paramount concert hall on Long Island, New York, expecting to stir up excitement among fans and help out during the Q&A. No one had a question for him, he said; they just wanted to tell Rosenthal about their favourite places to eat in Lisbon, Portugal, or Nashville, Tennessee. 'How did this happen?' the actor asked me over the phone last week. 'I've been doing stand-up for 30 years. He goes to Poland and eats meatloaf and sells out theatres around the world?' Loading There is no shortage of armchair-travel television. But somehow, Rosenthal has broken through and become a global star. Season eight of his show, which features Sydney and Adelaide, dropped in June, making it one of the longest-running unscripted shows on Netflix. In August, he'll start a North American tour, and a second cookbook, Phil's Favourites – the first was a New York Times bestseller – will come out in November. The live shows Rosenthal did last year sold out not only in New York City and Los Angeles, but also in Melbourne, Glasgow, Brussels and Dublin. There's no cooking demo, no tight five minutes of stand-up. Just him. What's the appeal? 'I know it's not my looks,' he said at a sneak preview of the show's new season in Manhattan. Tall and skinny, quick and twinkly, he comes across like everyone's favourite uncle – the silly one, who makes quarters disappear up his nose. Or great-uncle, considering he's 65. Rosenthal is a sunny counterpart to his most famous predecessor, Anthony Bourdain, who carried a whiff of darkness on all his adventures. Bourdain explored Vietnam's colonial legacy and travelled down the Congo River, but you never saw him doing a happy dance after biting into a herring or an arepa. Loading In 2014, four years before Bourdain died, Rosenthal was lucky (and canny) enough to hire his production company, Zero Point Zero. That explains the high-quality visuals and research that go into Somebody Feed Phil. Like Bourdain's shows, it's respectful of culture and food and the people who produce it – but silly about almost everything else. Rosenthal makes fun of his brother, Richard, the showrunner; banters with the prime minister of Finland; and is always game to put on a Cirque du Soleil costume or chase a chicken. At the end of each episode, he invites every cook, cheesemaker, fisherman and whoever else worked on the show to dinner, usually followed by chocolate egg creams – one of very few things he knows how to make. (The recipes in his cookbooks are contributed by chefs.) As Rosenthal tells it, his love of food was born not at home, but in diners. For Everybody Loves Raymond, he transferred many details of his Jewish-American background to the Italian-American character Ray Barone – including his mother's terrible cooking, which was played for laughs. Loading But the background is more complicated than that. His parents spent their childhoods in Nazi Germany. Max's family fled to the United States in 1938, immediately after Kristallnacht; Helen's stayed, until she and her mother were sent to Gurs, a concentration camp in south-western France. As refugees, they were en route to the US in 1941 when their ship was diverted to Cuba, where they waited two years before being allowed into the country. That was enough adventure for one lifetime, it seemed: When Rosenthal was growing up in New City, a middle-class suburb north of New York City, he said, his parents weren't worried about expanding their horizons or their palates. He recalls the food his mother cooked was so bland that he first tasted garlic as an undergraduate at university. His father cared about only one dish: scrambled eggs. (True story: 'Are my eggs fluffy?' is carved on his tombstone.) But treats such as cheeseburgers and egg creams, Rosenthal said, made him curious about what other delights might be out there in the world. As an aspiring actor in New York City in the 1980s, he scrimped for months to pay for dinners at fancy restaurants. Later, he moved to Los Angeles, then offstage and into writing, and eventually into the kind of success that allowed him to eat anywhere in the world. Loading After Raymond ended in 2005, Rosenthal tried for a decade to get another sitcom off the ground, but to his surprise, 'nobody wanted it', he said. So he began travelling more and spending time with food experts such as Silverton, chef Thomas Keller and Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, who died in 2018. Rosenthal said Gold, whose groundbreaking work celebrated taco trucks and noodle joints as fiercely as white-tablecloth restaurants, gave him the words that still illuminate the greater purpose of a show like Somebody Feed Phil. By showing the world what other people eat, Rosenthal explained, Gold 'said he was trying to make all of us a little less afraid of our neighbours'.
TimesLIVE
09-07-2025
- Health
- TimesLIVE
Unlearning the wellness myth
The wellness industrial complex, catalysed by our existential preoccupations of a purposeful life, is estimated to be worth $4.5-trillion, with a growth rate of 6.4% year-on-year, according to one report. Against the backdrop of a complex and entangled world whose accelerating and often violent ways debase the human spirit, a cohesive sense of direction and connection with something beyond ourselves becomes increasingly important. For some, this takes the form of faith-based approaches and particular diets, and for others — like me — that relentless search for self through meditation. But in seeking, the competing narratives around wellness are loud and difficult to ignore. From the crowd work associated with clickbait headlines on YouTube channels dedicated to horoscopic card readings, to lunar gatherings on Instagram Live feeds, the grammar of wellness requires vigilance — for the rabbit hole is bottomless, with many 'truths' in tow, all vying for attention. What distinguishes modern wellness, aside from its expansiveness, is its relentless focus on the self as the repository of all improvement. It's trickle-down wellness — the idea that, if you work hard enough on your body and mind, your inner glow will leak out of your fingertips and touch the world. It can be disorienting to see so much profit attached to the notion of 'self-care'. The fact is unassailable that our bodies do, in reality, keep score of the traumas we've experienced — be it unengaged grief from losing a loved one or a lifetime spent botch-metabolising food that's better suited to fuelling an aircraft than nourishing a living being. On a micro level, the phone that is always on, constantly interrupting one from being present with its endless notifications, is a blight. That said, the idea that a briskness towards wellness can somehow regenerate the frame externally probably holds water to a degree. But that it can reverse looming mortality? That has to be observed from a vantage point of suspicion. The more subtle truths — those that do not scream through influencer reels or corporate retreats, lie in the usually unnoticed — how your breath steadies when the body is humbled into stillness; how water tastes different when you've sat long enough to actually notice it; how being barefoot on the earth begins to feel less like a trope and more like a remembering and rooting. It is in these seemingly minor recalibrations that the pursuit shifts from spectacle to sustenance. So here I am, doing poses on a mat and having taken up a plant-based diet. It illuminates life, yes — but only so far. I am, like Bourdain, inclined to be vested in the eternal search — for it is that search, carried in the spirit of joy and tumult, which is the true marker of a life well lived. And everything else outside that? Well, 'none of that matters anymore'.
