Midway through Season 2, Episode 3 of Netflix’s makeover reality hit “Queer Eye,” food/wine expert Antoni Porowski and a scruffy, scraggly-raggedy Kansas camp supervisor had a fraught moment. Before the campers descended by the busload, Camp Wildwood Program Director Joey Greene teared up explaining how he used to love cooking for his son.
Porowski asked the obvious: Why didn’t he cook for his son anymore? “I was, err, I was drinking a lot,” Greene stammered. “That resulted in some serious problems.” For a flicker of a moment, Porowski looked like he might cry himself.
“I have a very intimate relationship with addiction,” Porowski replied. He let that marinate before continuing the conversation over a magnificent hunk of porchetta with built-in bacon. The two massaged the meat with brown sugar, peppers and coffee. They talked about self-esteem, self-care and healthy lifestyles. The son came for a visit. The porchetta was devoured. Everybody cried happy tears.
It was the kind of emotional moment that defines the wisdom purveyed by the “Fab Five” of “Queer Eye” as they cross the country offering compassionate lifestyle makeovers to sad, underdressed people.
Porowski doesn’t slow down between filming. He’s touring the country promoting his new cookbook, “In the Kitchen with Antoni.” At three Sept. 11 stops in Chicago, he’ll demo recipes from the gorgeously illustrated book with a foreword by former Chicagoan Ted Allen, OG food and wine guru for the original “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” series that ran from 2003 to 2007.
There is more than pretty pictures and showstopper recipes in the book. Porowski talks about one of his earliest kitchen jobs, when he “always” showed up hung over and was tended to by a crew of Polish cooks whose thick soups “made me feel human again.” He doesn’t care to look back too publicly.
“A lot of my teens and my 20s are were pretty rough. I like to leave it at that,” he said during a break between tour stops. “But I could relate to [Greene] in a very personal way. When I was in the depths, food was something that brought me a lot of comfort. I think I lead a life now that’s more gratitude-based, and I love, love, love saying ‘thank you’ with food. It’s the ultimate gift. You’re literally nourishing somebody.”
When he was growing up in his native Montreal and later West Virginia, “food was a way to make things better,” Porowski added. “We didn’t always communicate very well in my family, but food helped us get along. When we all sat down around the table things would be OK. My mom would create these huge feasts. My parents were obsessed with fruit platters and charcuterie. We’d have them for breakfast sometimes. Food is central to some of the best memories I have growing up.”
While some of the recipes in “In the Kitchen” look elaborately showy enough to be plated at Alinea, Porowski preaches the gospel of simplicity.
“It really does come down to basics,” he said. “Learn how to boil pasta properly. Learn a proper pesto. Treat food with care. It’s all about buying good ingredients. If you’re having a dinner party, don’t try out something brand new for the first time. Make something you know and love.”
Porowski says he doesn’t identify as gay – in the book, he worries that he wasn’t “gay enough to be on a show called ‘Queer Eye.’ ”
“If I refer to myself gay, that disrespects the women I’ve been in love with and had full relationships with. I think ‘fluid’ is as close as I can get to a label,” he said.
Porowski spent spent years as Allen’s personal assistant, and credits his former boss for upping his culinary skills. “Salt every step of the way instead of all at once. Don’t use canned beans. Although that one I don’t follow. I have a recipe with canned butter beans in the book [butter beans and tuna in tangy tomato sauce]. It’s OK.
“People can get intimidated by the unknown,” he said. “It’s like that with people we don’t know, it’s like that with food we don’t know. You can see a beautiful, finished dish and think ‘Oh, I could never do that.’ I try to break things down into simple steps and teach with compassion.”
