‘Antoni in the Kitchen’ Comes to TPAC - A Conversation with Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski

WILL SHUTES

Antoni Porowski comes off as the quiet one in the Netflix reboot of Queer Eye. As the resident food and wine expert, Porowski’s scenes with the show’s “Heroes” (Read: Eliza Doolittle in need of a Henry Higgins) are often more personal and less flashy than those with his counterparts in The Fab Five. Cooking, as anyone who does it often and with at least a little bit of skill knows, isn’t about grand gestures and shock tactics. With his upcoming cookbook, Antoni in the Kitchen, Porowski is hitting the road to promote the book. He’ll be here in Nashville at TPAC’s Polk Theatre on September 13th.

I feel like going against the Maria von Trapp rule of “Let’s start at the very beginning” and starting at the very end: What would you like people to look back on in ten years and say about you and your tenure on Queer Eye?

ANTONI: I was having a conversation with Ted Allen about it, actually. We had dinner a few weeks ago and he was saying that both iterations of the show have been like, it’s the same name, but they’re completely different shows. The first one was definitely more comedically driven and there was a lot more humor in it. And then with Netflix’s iteration of it, it’s definitely a little more heart-heavy and it’s led by the heart.

I’m sure Antoni in the Kitchen, will include some wonderful stories from your life. Do you have a particular cooking memory that brings a certain special happiness to you?

ANTONI: I’ve been in touch with my dad recently. It reminded me of when we lived in West Virginia and we would drive to Montreal. I would ride in the front seat with him and his favorite snack was carrot sticks and tamari almonds that he would pick up from a Middle Eastern market in Montreal. He would sprinkle lemon juice and put nice flaked salt on it. And sometimes we would have these beautiful Medjool Dates.

And then I started making this salad for for friends sometime after, like a carrot ribbon salad where I would just peel them and I would put them in an ice bath so that they would curl up beautifully. And then I would dry them and make a nice little light vinaigrette for them and toss in some parsley and some almonds and some dates. And I never really thought very much about it until I was writing the cookbook. What I realized was like, oh, wow, there actually is a story behind that dish.

I know a lot of times in a lot of different media you have mentioned the late Anthony Bourdain as a big influence on you. And I’m sitting here in my office looking at my own beaten to shit copy of the Les Halles Cookbook. He would always talk to his fellow chefs about a last meal, about the Death Row Dinner, so to speak. So it’s your turn. What would you want that final meal to be? It could be absolutely anything and cooked by absolutely anybody and I will allow you to defy the space-time continuum here.

ANTONI: I would start out with my best friend Reema and her mom making Dahi puri, which are these little puffs filled with yogurt, fork-mashed potato and mung beans, with cilantro-mint chutney and also a tamarind chutney and little cilantro leaves on top. They’re just the perfect little amuse-bouche.

And then I just had a thought of how cool it would be to sit with Oscar Wilde and eat really crispy, really thin potato latkes with crème fraîche and like the best fucking caviar ever. Just spoons of it. And maybe a bit of grated egg and some chives.

And then I would sit with Jack Kerouac. And I would have a poutine with just some really nice Russet or Yukon Gold potatoes, double fried so that they get really dark dark, with a real Quebec gravy and real Quebec cheese curds that just sort of melt.

And I would be with my dad back in West Virginia, where we would sit outside in warmer months, and he would just buy a big beautiful tomahawk steak. And he would grill me the perfect medium rare steak with a handful of asparagus charred on the grill with some corn on the cob and some really good French butter. And that would be our meal. We would just sit there sometimes in silence, just eating, and the joy of him noshing away at an ear of corn and then just biting into a steak as we like looked inside to see if it’s a perfect medium rare. That would be really nice.

I think to finish it off I would want… I don’t know… I feel like somebody who would prepare me for the next chapter. I think it would be Johnny Cash. He did a cover of a Nine Inch Nails Song called Hurt. Yes, there’s a music video for it. I just feel like he was a man who was ready to go by the end of it and I would just want him to give me words of wisdom. Part of me, I think, is really afraid of death and I wouldn’t really know what to expect.

I would make him a brioche vanilla bread pudding with dulce de leche drizzled over it. And on the side, I would just have a bowl of the most perfect blackberries – when they’re perfectly ripe and they’re sweet, juicy, and they just pop in your mouth – with like a few mint leaves.

Antoni Porowski will host “Antoni in the Kitchen: A Night of Delicious Conversation” at TPAC’s Polk Theatre on Friday, September 13th. Tickets are still available through the TPAC Box Office. Porowski’s book, Antoni in the Kitchen, will be released on September 9th through your favorite bookseller.