Antoni Porowski Is Hosting the Thoughtful Celebrity Food Show We All Need
Issa Rae, Florence Pugh, and more stars are opening up in the new series.
COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC / AMY MIKLER
You can learn a lot about someone from what they eat. Of course there’s the obvious — the foods that they like and dislike — but diving deeper into the history of someone’s diet can uncover even more insights, ranging from core memories to the way culture has shaped their food preferences.
It’s this power of culinary history that Queer Eye star Antoni Porowksi leverages to learn more about some of your favorite celebrities in his upcoming show No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski. The new series from National Geographic isn’t a talk show or centered around interviews, but you’ll still walk away with a better understanding of who its guests are.
In this culinary travel series, Porowski spends each episode taking one celebrity — the star-studded lineup includes Florence Pugh, Awkwafina, Justin Theroux, James Marsden, Issa Rae, and Henry Golding — on a journey to experience and learn about what their ancestors ate.
Courtesy of National Geographic/Annice Lyn
This isn’t the first time a host has used food to prompt powerful people to open up. Both Sean Evans and Amelia Dimoldenberg talk to celebrities while snacking on chicken in their respective YouTube series, Hot Ones and Chicken Shop Date. But Porowski’s new project is a dramatic departure from these formats, instead using genealogy and family history to help his guests learn more about themselves, and take audiences along for the ride.
Giving someone a guided tour of what the earlier generations of their family ate is not a quick and easy task, and Porowski brings each of his guests to multiple locations. During his time with James Marsden, they start by eating the actor’s childhood favorite, chicken-fried steak in Texas, only to later end up sipping a German beer and hiking through the Bavarian mountains. The Montreal-born Queer Eye star and Awkwafina take a journey from eating jajangmyeon (a Korean-Chinese noodle dish with a black bean sauce) in New York City to preparing kimchi in a backyard in South Korea.
It can be difficult to make high-profile people feel safe sharing their personal lives with the public, and letting an audience watch as they learn new information about their own history is even more vulnerable. Porowksi says he worked to create an environment where guests would feel comfortable, telling Food & Wine “the way that I leaned in is that I just got personal. I shared my own stories. I asked them questions about themselves and just leaned in. You have to kind of develop a sense of mutual trust and know that there are no gotcha moments here.”
The host’s own passion for food and desire to create a positive experience comes across authentically through No Taste Like Home. As Porowski leads each of his companions through different farm tours, chefs tastings, and more, he explains that “the only goal of this is for you to have a really wonderful experience you can pass on to hopefully your kids, or other members of your family, depending on your life situation. And then hopefully for a lot of people to watch and just be exposed to these beautiful stories and to hopefully… get curious about themselves.”
The journey that National Geographic and Porowksi curate for each guest is unique, and focuses on experiential moments that allow them to feel or taste the same moments as their ancestors. Issa Rae picks and cooks with the moringa leaves that her great great grandmother may have used as a healer. Florence Pugh learns how to turn herring into kippers, the smoked fish that her great great great grandfather likely sold while working as a fishmonger.
Throughout each trip around the world you can see what inspires each star the most, and really makes them excited. Porowski recalls one moment when he and Pugh tasted a Yorkshire pudding together and were both immediately enraptured, saying “We just both started laughing hysterically out of joy. And it’s very rare that I have someone who shares that deep passion for food as I do. And to have it be a perfect stranger. And from that moment, at least for me, it was like, ‘oh, we’re friends.’”
Courtesy of National Geographic / Chris Raphael
The authenticity that you feel from No Taste Like Home is grounded in the careful planning of National Geographic. Each episode is extensively researched before filming, with genealogists even going to locations months before filming to verify oral histories in places like Borneo and Senegal.
That devotion to accuracy and detail extends to the experience that each celebrity has while filming — Porowski notes that featured guests “often meet a genealogist or an expert [and have] a couple of hours free reign to ask whatever it was that they really wanted to ask, specifically about food or family members or whatever it was.”
There are few things more disarming than learning something about yourself that you didn’t already know. Imagine doing that in front of a camera, and the stakes are even higher. But by creating a welcoming atmosphere that encourages questions, and creates the opportunity to ask them, Porowski and National Geographic are allowing celebrities to show a new, more authentic, side of themselves.
No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski will premiere with two episodes — at 9 p.m. Eastern and 10 p.m. Eastern — on February 23 on National Geographic.
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Antoni Porowski wants you to learn about your ancestors—through their recipes
The Queer Eye star discusses his obsession with food, and helping others find their family history through food in the new travel series No Taste Like Home.
Antoni Porowski believes in the importance of storytelling through culinary traditions. The child of Polish parents who immigrated to Montréal, he “felt Polish enough” until the family moved to West Virginia and he began high school. Wanting to hang out with the cool kids, he started to notice how he stood out, like bringing cabbage to school for lunch and correcting people who had trouble pronouncing his name.
“When I decided I wanted to pursue acting, I told my dad that I wanted to change my last name to something that sounded a little more American,” says the author, Queer Eye star, and World Food Programme Goodwill Ambassador. “My dad asked, ‘Then how will anyone know you’re Polish?’ I didn’t get it at the time, but I’m glad I didn’t go down that road.” He still loves the Polish food he was raised on—like sorrel soup, hunter stew, pierogis, and cabbage rolls—and it remains a constant touchstone in his family.
Porowski’s belief that food can tell a person about who they are has inspired his new show, No Taste Like Home, which dives into the heritage of six celebrity guests. On journeys toward cultural and personal discovery, Porowski travels with Awkwafina, Henry Golding, James Marsden, Florence Pugh, Issa Rae, and Justin Theroux to South Korea, Malaysian Borneo, Germany, the United Kingdom, Senegal, and Italy. Through sharing family stories and connections with food, the docuseries examines each person’s rich heritage through their ancestors’ culinary traditions.
(Related: How to make perfect pierogi, Poland’s famous dumplings.)
“We have a responsibility as humans to make sure we tell stories around our family’s beloved dishes,” he says. “When you know where you came from, it helps give you a foundation for moving forward on your own path.”
We connected with Porowski in San Francisco. He talked about the show, shared how the experiences have changed him, and looked at his own cultural questions about his family’s food traditions.
There’s something about visibility when you are among the culture from which you’ve descended, even if you’ve had only a small connection to that culture. What makes food the key to unlocking memories and the motive to dive in deeper?
For me, it’s an easy vehicle because food is so deeply emotional. It provides us with a sense of comfort. I was raised in a house where we weren’t really good at communicating our feelings, and some of the most heartwarming moments (and also some of the most painful ones) took place around the dinner table. If I didn’t have Polish food when I was growing up, I would have tried to assimilate more into American culture. But the food is what kept me close to my heritage.
When I visited South Korea with Nora (Awkwafina), there was a moment when things clicked for her. She smelled kelp as it was hydrating and sesame oil heating up and beef hitting the pan while making miyeokguk, a kelp soup that’s traditionally a post-childbirth dish. She realized it was a smell she remembered from the time her mother was ill. Nora cried, and everyone on the set just teared up.
(Related: Everything you need to know about bibimbap, Korea’s famous rice dish.)
What aspects of research were challenging in putting together the individual family stories?
We had an entire genealogy team, and it took months of research to get the details of everyone’s family story. In some of the destinations, like Germany, Italy, and England, many of the documents are public domain, and there’s an infrastructure to access that information. But in Senegal or Borneo, much of the details are oral history. Our research team had to speak with village elders and confirm that the stories are factually accurate. We’ve been careful to clarify when we’re less than 100 percent sure of any detail.
How have the experiences in these six episodes changed you?
I feel like we don’t have enough conversations about our generational gifts. Look at Issa, a strong, independent woman who empowers women from the shows she produces to the companies in which she invests. It was impressive to learn that there were so many incredible women in her family. Justin is so passionate about his rescue pit bull and pet adoption, and learning of his generational connection to adoption was an emotional moment. It was also powerful to see Florence and her family’s passion for food after learning that there was a period of time that her ancestors really struggled.
I describe my own connection to cuisine as a deep obsession, but I’m sure there’s a reason why my family is so connected with food. Both of my grandfathers were in concentration camps. As a child, I heard the stories about not wasting anything on your plate.
If you had an episode of No Taste Like Home dedicated to your cultural background, what would you want to include?
I’d like to explore the significance of dishes that are so strong in my memory. I feel that there’s power and importance behind something, but I don’t know what it is. On Christmas Eve, we had uszka, dumplings known as “little ears” for their shape. The journey for making that dish began in the summer months when we’d go foraging for the mushrooms that we’d preserve and then use as filling for the dumplings. But one of them would be filled with peppercorns. If you got that one, as unpleasant as it would be taste-wise, it would be a sign of good luck for the coming year.
My mother would only allow my middle sister to help her make this dish by hand, but I would watch. There was a lot of intensity because my mother was extremely focused and wouldn’t talk. I’m just struck by how much energy, time, effort, care, precision, and love went into it, but I don’t really know much about it.
In a time when distractions and divisions inhibit our ability to see each other’s humanity, what do you hope viewers take away from this series by watching others discover ancestral traditions that tell them something about who they are?
I think we act in certain ways when we’re afraid of something. When I talk with someone, I may not agree with their views, but at the end of our time together, I can sort of understand where they’re coming from. The more we’re exposed to diversity—different people, different places, different cultures—the less scary the world becomes. You actually realize that we have more similarities than differences, which is something I said in the first season of Queer Eye. You only understand what we have in common once you truly listen to what other people have to say.
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Justin Theroux, Awkwafina’s family recipes as rediscovered on ‘No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski’
Tortellini en brodo from Italy and Jjajangmyeon from South Korea.
Antoni Porowski talks new show
Antoni Porowski travels the world retracing the ancestral, gastronomic roots of celebrities’ families in the new National Geographic series, “No Taste like Home.”
On Tuesday, Porowski gave “Good Morning America” a sneak peek and first taste of some of the food he tasted in episodes with Awkwafina and Justin Theroux.
Porowski said that the show gives a fresh lens to these actors “in their human form, just living through this whole journey and uncovering these things is an interesting lens that we don’t often get to see.”
Theroux seeks out the origins of a family pasta dish alongside Porowski as the pair go on an Italian road trip full of delicious discoveries and samplings of the region’s finest food to uncover more about the actor’s Italian ancestry.
Awkwafina, who lost her mother at a young age, reconnects with her South Korean culinary and ancestral heritage, which presents evocative flavors and a new perspective on her own identity.
Check out two full recipes below for the dishes they discovered along their journeys.
These recipes are inspired by the dishes as seen on the series.
“This is the dish that Justin’s grandmother would make for him every Christmas, which originates from the Bologna area,” Porowski explained. “There’s a mix of pork loin, prosciutto and mortadella all mixed into this.”
Ingredients
Sfoglia:
2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
Broth:
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 large onion, quartered
1 whole chicken (or 2 bone-in chicken thighs)
1/2 lb (225g) beef shank or beef bones
10 cups (2.5L) water
1 1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
Fillings:
1/2 lb (225g) pork loin, minced
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 oz (60g) prosciutto crudo, finely minced
2 oz (60g) mortadella, finely minced
2/3 cup (50g) grated Parmigiano Reggiano
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Directions
Prepare the broth – takes 20 minutes to prepare and 3 hours to cook
Prepare the filling:Take the mince pork meat and cook in a pan with some butter. Cook lightly, turn up the heat and dry with some old bread.
Add salt and pepper.
Mince prosciutto and mortadella
Once the meat is cold, add the minced prosciutto and mortadella.
Add Parmesan and nutmeg (according to your taste).
If useful, add a raw egg to condense it.
Prepare the sfoglia
Assemble and fold the tortellini
Roll out the sfoglia pasta.
Cut the pasta into squares.
Add a small ball of filling to each square.
Fold the tortellini one by one and put aside to dry.
Cook the tortellini in the broth: Heat up the broth for 10 minutes. Drop in the tortellini and cook for 5 minutes.Serve up – the ratio of broth to tortellini is according to taste.
“This is a traditional South Korean dish that Nora’s Chinese-American paternal grandmother made her, so she could remember her mom because she lost her when she was 4 years old,” Porowski said. “It comes together quickly with fermented black bean paste, oyster sauce, sesame oil and just mix it all together.”
Ingredients
Jjajangmyeon sauce:3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp chunjang (black bean paste)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
½ lb (225g) pork belly, diced
1 large onion, diced
1 small courgette (zucchini), diced
2 scallions, sliced
2 cups (500ml) water
Noodles:
14 oz (400g) fresh wheat udon-style Chinese noodles (or dried jajangmyeon noodles)
Garnish:
Julienned cucumber
Method:
Dice onions and courgettes. Slice scallions. Dice pork belly into cubes.
In a large wok, fry chopped scallions in vegetable oil to create a scallion oil.
Sauté diced pork in the scallion oil until browned.
Add the diced onions, courgette, and saute.
Add Chunjang (black bean paste) to the sizzling hot oil and stir vigorously to loosen the paste and create the sauce as it melds with the oil, turning it a glossy black color.
After a minute of frying the paste in oil, coat the paste over the ingredients.
Add two cups of water and leave to simmer for 10 minutes.
If sauce needs thickening, add corn starch here.
Add any seasoning: soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, sugar.
Cook the noodles in boiling water, then drain.
Separate the plain noodles into deep bowls, and spoon the sauce over the top (without mixing it through).
Julienne the cucumber into matchsticks and garnish the noodles.
Recipes reprinted courtesy of National Geographic.
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