Antoni Porowski’s on ‘No Style Like Dwelling’

For Antoni Porowski, a meal is greater than what’s in your plate. Regardless of the place you reside, the home-cooked dishes you grew up consuming inform a narrative about who you’re and the place you come from. And that’s precisely what he explores—alongside six movie star visitors—on his new collection, No Style Like Dwelling With Antoni Porowski.  

Porowski is named the always-friendly meals and wine professional on Netflix collection Queer Eye, and as a cookbook writer, and he traces his ardour for meals to his childhood. He credit his Polish immigrant background and rising up in a various neighborhood in Montreal for shaping his perception that meals generally is a nice level of connection. 

He recalled, in an interview with Journey + Leisure, one “core reminiscence” from his Montreal childhood: “A few times a yr in elementary faculty, they’d shut down the gymnasium at night time, and also you and your mother and father might come and produce a dish out of your respective nation. A number of my pals have been from a number of completely different backgrounds, like my greatest pal, Andrew. His mother was Portuguese and his dad was Iranian, so he would carry a tahdig and a fish stew from Portugal.” And though Porowski was admittedly a “very choosy eater” as a baby, he says this expertise normalized the range, publicity, and entry to all completely different sorts of meals—one thing he explains is fairly frequent in Montreal.

“We have now a very huge meals scene. It’s a very good high quality of life. There’s a big space in Montreal the place, I keep in mind in faculty, you could possibly go to an Ethiopian restaurant, Greek, Italian, on the identical block,” mentioned Porowski. His mother and father additionally formed his curiosity in meals via journey. “My mother and father traveled a lot after I was rising up. They’d carry us to some locations, however all of the actually enjoyable spots, like Morocco, they’d go alone. However they at all times got here again with meals. It was by no means T-shirts or jewellery or something like that. It was at all times tinned fish or some type of a kielbasa scenario in the event that they have been in Japanese Europe, so we at all times acquired to attempt the issues that they had.” His mom, “a incredible house cook dinner,” in line with Porowski, would even recreate the dishes that they had on their travels so the youngsters might attempt them, too.

And rising up on this numerous setting the place meals was used as some extent of connection and power for training didn’t simply assist Porowski study different cultures; it helped him perceive and recognize his personal Polish roots. “I believed I knew a lot about Polish meals. It was the primary language I discovered. We solely spoke Polish at house. We have been very concerned within the Polish neighborhood and all of the customs as Polish Canadians,” he shared. However later in his childhood, when his household moved to West Virginia, Porowski mentioned he “didn’t need to have something to do with being Polish.” He added, “I had an ethnic title. I used to be bringing cabbage rolls to high school, like that wasn’t essentially very ‘cool.’ And so I went via a time period of determining who I used to be.”

Later throughout college again in Montreal, he labored at a Polish restaurant the place his dad, sisters, and cousins additionally labored. “When you’re Polish in Montreal, you’re employed there,” he famous. He says this expertise modified his perspective. “To fulfill younger folks in my age group who’ve Polish names, who determine strongly with the tradition and the meals, it type of made it OK for me. I want it was one thing I might have discovered alone, however it made it enticing to see different folks thriving and leaning into the place they got here from, as a result of on the finish of the day, it’s not likely one thing you possibly can change. You have been born with it, so that you may as nicely embrace it.” 

Now, in No Place Like Dwelling, which premieres Feb. 23 on Nationwide Geographic and the following day on Disney+ and Hulu, Porowski takes others on an identical journey of self-reflection via meals and journey. Six movie star visitors—Florence Pugh, Awkwafina, Justin Theroux, James Marsden, Issa Rae, and Henry Golding—be part of him as they dive deep into household recipes and the tales they maintain. And Porowski’s heat, openness, and curiosity create a protected area for his visitors to be weak as they be taught typically stunning issues about themselves and their households. 

All through the six-episode season, there are moments of actual emotion because the actors—who’re used to working off a script and hitting their marks, mentioned Porowski—discover their private ties to the locations featured. “You’re coping with actors who’ve set name occasions. They memorize their strains. A few of them deeply put together, others rather less so, however they’re used to rigidity and construction.” This unscripted present was, in some methods, very completely different than their typical initiatives. “They knew which metropolis we have been going to be in each morning, however they didn’t know what they have been doing each single day. We needed it to be an journey for them” mentioned Porowski. He mentioned he needed them “to dwell and breathe as who [they] are and simply dwell in truth all through these circumstances. They usually have been all genuinely so down.” 

Of the expertise for the actors, Porowski mentioned, “On the finish of the journey, our hope is that it seems like an precise present, that you’ve got info for your self to know slightly bit extra about the place you come from, and it’s one thing that hopefully you possibly can move on to different members of the family, children, no matter it’s.” He says that he typically talks along with his pals concerning the idea of generational trauma, however that the present additionally uncovers and celebrates “lovely generational presents.”  

Issa Rae’s journey to Senegal was particularly memorable for Porowski. “She checked out me firstly and was like, ‘I’ve seen Queer Eye. You’re not going to make me cry.’ She mentioned it as a joke, however was additionally half critical. And I swear I had no intention of creating her cry.” He continued, “By the top of it, she acquired actually emotional and teared up, simply listening to about all these unimaginable girls in her lineage. And it was her phrases, not mine: ‘I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. I’m the best way I’m due to those that got here earlier than me.’” 

The connection to and appreciation of your previous is one factor Porowski hopes viewers take away from the present. “It’s necessary to keep in mind that the previous, as messy as it’s, can also be actually lovely. And there are individuals who have energetically and genetically formed us to be who we’re, and I hope that evokes different folks to get interested in their very own household histories.”