He Ate the Whole Thing

This is a story about TV dinners.

Not the kind that people eat when they’re perched on the couch watching television, but the kind they eat when they’re in a room full of writers, composing what we see on the tube. It’s a story about depravation and gluttony, reward and distraction, sustenance and comfort.

For the writing staff of the hit sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond,” a good meal “was more than essential,” recalls Phil Rosenthal, the show’s creator and executive producer. “I’d say it was the most important element in terms of establishing a camaraderie on the show. Good food makes you happy.”

In Rosenthal’s shop, four dry-erase boards had equal prominence. One contained the titles of every “Raymond” episode ever produced, and another featured ideas for upcoming shows. The third listed restaurants the writers loved or wanted to try, while the fourth displayed their favorite places for takeout.

No wonder Rosenthal named his production company Where’s Lunch.

Once a week, the “Raymond” writers would leave their office on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank and drive to Studio City to stand in line at Sushi Nozawa, a much-beloved sushi bar in a strip mall. Rosenthal would sometimes order food over the Internet: stone crabs from Miami, deli from New York, pizza from Chicago.

Lunch was an especially big deal on the show, which aired its final episode in 2005, because dinner was verboten.

“Not once in nine years did we eat dinner in the writers’ room,” says Rosenthal, a self-proclaimed foodie who owns the Beverly Boulevard chophouse Jar and is an investor in some of L.A.’s hottest restaurants, including Providence, the Hungry Cat and the soon-to-be opened Mozza.

“Part of the job was to go home and fight with your wife, your husband, your kids, your parents,” he says. “If you were going to write about life, you had to have one.”

Not so on every show. In fact, for most television writers--who can find themselves captive in windowless quarters all day and into the night--food is a consolation for not having one.

“We took away their lives,” says Marta Kauffman, co-creator and executive producer of “Friends.” “If we were asking people to work that hard, the least we could do was to give them food.”

Just how important was food on “Friends”?

“Have you seen my ass?” Kauffman asks, bemoaning the weight she gained during the show’s 10-year run.

It’s a common lament. “Everyone weighs more at the end of the season then at the beginning,” says Dan O’Shannon, co-executive producer of “Jericho,” a CBS drama to premiere this fall, and a 20-year TV veteran who has worked on “Newhart,” “Cheers” and “Frasier,” among others. “You’re stuck in a room writing all day, and one of the only vacations from it is to take a break and go get something to eat.”

And eat and eat and eat.

Jeff Strauss, an executive producer on the CW’s “All of Us,” remembers working on “Friends.” “We used to refer to it as flying first class on Qantas,” Strauss says, referring to the Australian airline. “We were tied to our chairs for 14 hours a day, and people would bring us huge quantities of food.”

A typical day on “Friends”--as on other shows--would start with writers arriving at work to find bagels, lox, cream cheese, doughnuts, fruit, juice, sodas and coffee. By 11 a.m., pretzels, string cheese and other snack foods would start to appear on the writers’ conference table. By noon, lunch was being ordered, with each writer required to take a turn picking the restaurant from a large book of takeout menus.

By late afternoon, the writing staff would go down to the set to watch a run-through of the show. While there, they would inevitably nosh from the table set up by craft services--the catering companies that provide cast and crew with everything from breakfast burritos to elaborate barbeque dinners. The table held an endless supply of candy, crudites, chips, dips, sandwiches, sodas and more.

After getting notes suggesting script changes, the writers would head back to start working on them--but not before ordering dinner. If they got hungry while waiting for dinner to arrive, “because they hadn’t eaten for 12 seconds,” Kauffman says, there was the kitchen across from the writers’ room, where cabinets were stuffed with chips and candy and the refrigerator and freezer were filled with soda, water and ice cream.

“We are all spoiled,” says David Shore, executive producer of the Fox show “House,” nominated this year for an Emmy for best drama. “We just say, ‘Hey, I want whatever,’ and somebody acts like we are doing something important and they go out and get it for us.”

On some shows, food is more than just a perk; it’s used to keep the writers engaged.

For example, during grueling stints on “Friends”--say at 4 a.m.--food games were played to break the tension. On one such occasion, someone bet a writer $5,000 that he couldn’t down a 5-pound can of pork and beans. He managed to finish it, and then used the money to help pay for a London vacation with his girlfriend.

“It kept people bright and awake and with a very sophomoric team spirit, which . . . helped quite a bit,” Kauffman says. “It brought levity to the room.”

Some say they’ve seen food also bring out bitterness. Despite earning incomes that can stretch into the high six figures and beyond, writers can resent the long hours and inherent instability of working in television. So much so that some will request more food than they could ever possibly eat.

“I have seen people order a 22-ounce porterhouse steak and a veal chop” for dinner, Strauss says. They do it “because they can or because they are tired and angry.”

Stephen Nathan, an executive producer on the Fox drama “Bones,” says in the 30 years he’s written for TV, eating at the office has run the gamut from junk to gourmet. His food experiences were elevated early in his career when he teamed up with Diane English, of “Murphy Brown” fame, to work on “Love & War” and “Double Rush.” Every few weeks they’d buy a good case of wine, and when they were trapped in the office at dinnertime, they’d order in from Pinot Bistro or another nice restaurant.

“We all wanted to go home,” Nathan says, “but if we couldn’t, then we tried to make it less painful.”

For some writers, though, no amount of fancy food can quell the feeling that hits when dinner menus come out.

“As soon as that happens, everyone knows they’re not going to see their families that night and a grim sort of misery sets in,” says Ellie Herman, who has written TV dramas for 17 years, including “Joan of Arcadia” and “Desperate Housewives” and now “Jericho.” “When you do nothing but eat takeout and look at the same eight faces, nothing tastes good.”