Can he really cook?
Nice, hunky ‘Queer Eye’ star Antoni Porowski answers his online critics with book of fresh recipes
The second Google search return for “Can Antoni Porowski cook?” is “Antoni Porowski Can Cook.”
That the second search return affirms Porowski’s identity as a person who can cook is a yearsinthemaking success — an especially welcome achievement for somebody who is now on tour (he’ll appear at the Castro Theatre on Wednesday, Sept. 18) with a cookbook-slash-quasi-memoir aptly titled “Antoni in the Kitchen.”
Some background: Antoni Porowski is one of the stars of the Netflix reboot of “Queer Eye,” the “reality” show in which five queer people help an individual — a “hero,” in the production’s parlance — sort out his or her life for the better. There is the fashion expert (Tan France), the grooming expert ( Jonathan Van Ness), the culture expert (Karamo Brown), the design expert (Bobby Bern) and, of course, the food and wine expert: Antoni Porowski.
Of the five queer stars, however, Porowski has had the hardest time earning that “expert” title. The first Google search return for the aforementioned inquiry remains a much less generous “Can Antoni from ‘Queer Eye’ actually cook? An Instagram investigation.”
This was somewhat unavoidable for two reasons.
First: Porowski is the only “Queer Eye” expert who was not exactly, not strictly, an expert in their field at the start.
France was already an English fashion designer; Van Ness was already a hairdresser; Brown, who acts more as a therapist, was already a licensed psychotherapist; and Berk was already an interior designer.
Porowski has always had a relationship with food, but he was not a chef. In fact, and this is public record, Porowski got his foot in the door thanks to his work as an assistant to the first “Queer Eye” food and wine expert, Ted Allen.
Second: Porowski is both objectively attractive (requisite muscles, expressive brown eyes, disarming smile) and objectively nice and affable (he laughs, very genuinely, during phone interviews). Together these two traits are, as a colleague recently pointed out, objectively annoying.
To put it bluntly, Porowski was always going to be the perfect target for the internet, and so he was:
“Investigation: Does The Incredibly Hot Food Guy From ‘Queer Eye’ Even Know How To Cook?” ( Junkee.com)
“The Exquisite Blankness (and Highly Suspect Guacamole) of Antoni Porowski from ‘Queer Eye’” (New Yorker)
“Season 2 Of ‘Queer Eye’ Proves It: Antoni Can’t Cook” (Whimn.com)
There is a lesson here, however, one that Porowski seems particularly well positioned to teach us: Not just that the internet is an imperfect mirror, one that twists us up, like the polished and bent metal inside a fun house, and leaves behind something unrecognizable. But also that we’re always happy to embrace — to relish, even — another person’s distorted reflection.
Porowski seems to have recognized this from the getgo.
The introduction for “Antoni in the Kitchen” (coauthored by Mindy Fox) is brief and mostly perfunctory. Porowski outlines the general thrust of his cookbook, that the recipes he has included will pull from the various stages and parts of his life — his Polish roots, his summers in Quebec, his spendthrift (and sometimes hungover) college years and, of course, his time on “Queer Eye.”
But his insight comes as he describes the day he got the call from casting, the one that told him he’d got the “Queer Eye” job. He writes about being stunned and giggly with his partner at the time. And then absolutely terrified.
“Was I a total impostor?”
The internet’s response, Porowski says over the phone, didn’t help.
“I have a pretty good sense of humor about myself,” Porowksi says. “Some days I was feeling more sure of myself. Other days, I’d wake up a little more sensitive.”
“Oh my gosh. Can I perform at this job?”
It was all the twistedup mirror. Take, for instance, the story of “Antoni and the Avocado.”
There is a sevenpage index at the back of “Antoni in the Kitchen.” Listed are the usual subjects (corn, fish, garlic) and various dishes with Antoniified names (Frenchified latkes, hilo poutine, Jim’s pi pie). But the food the internet has come to most associate with Porowski — that would be the avocado — does not appear once, not in the index and not in a single one of the dozens of recipes.
That’s not what someone familiar with Porowski would expect.
Porowski was dragged during the first season for constantly using avocados, as though it were the only thing he knew how to “cook.” He was dragged again a couple seasons later when he recommended using Greek yogurt instead of sour cream in a guacamole recipe. And then there’s the semiviral ad Porowski did for the premade, plasticwrapped Wholly Guacamole, during which he talks like a stoner on Adderall and appears breathlessly obsessed with the stuff.
It was all a digital caricature. Porowski likes avocado, sure, but, he says, “It’s not something I use in everyday cooking.” If he had to boil himself down to a oneingredient chef — and he prefers the title “home cook” — it would be frozen peas. Or dairy. He’s always loved cheese; the stinkier the better.
“There were two episodes where I used avocado in the 16 (episodes) that we shot,” he says. “And those were shown (backtoback) at the beginning of the first season. And also with Millennials now and avocado being a thing, sometimes you get remembered for something you didn’t really plan on.”
The avocado was instructive, though. Porowski pushed to get more of his recipes and cooking instructions included in subsequent episode edits. He mostly succeeded, and a producer, Jennifer Lane, checked him when he overdid it and pitched dishes that were too complicated.
“You have to remember what your role is on this show. You’re trying to build a bridge between our ‘heroes’ and the kitchen,” she said. Or at least that’s what he remembers her saying. “By showing them an intimidating recipe … that’s you feeding into your ego.”
“My role is just really to teach people,” Porowski says now. “To make it accessible, to make it relatable, to make it easy and exciting and to inspire people.”
Porowski’s cookbook still plays off exactly what the internet loves and hates about him. The book is full of photos of him in tightfitting shirts, smiling in a way that makes a person melt right alongside recipes written in his laidback tone. (The writers at Jezebel couldn’t help but try a few of the recipes. “It wasn’t terrible.”)
“My perception of myself is, I guess, different than the public perception,” Porowski says. “People focus or hone in on whatever the avocado is.”
But, to some extent, his new book offers a better response than any televised cooking lesson could. It’s just “Antoni in the Kitchen,” take it or leave it.