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Antoni Porowski is not sporting one of his infamous band T-shirts when we meet. Instead, the Queer Eye star wears a tight-fitting black polo that shows off his biceps, accented with enough swaggy chains and ornamental rings to make you want to call him “Daddy.” It is, in fact, a look. “The gold is very recent,” he assures me. They're “loaners” from a friend.
I meet Porowski in a two-level library of wall-to-wall books and mahogany wood nestled in the restaurant of New York's Nomad Hotel, which is befitting of a secret room in the game of Cluedo. The restaurant, though, happens to host his favourite roast chicken dish of all time, which he salivates over.
“I never order chicken in a restaurant because that's something that I prepare at home, but they do this roast chicken for two, sometimes I have it for one [and] they basically roast the whole chicken and they present it to you and they take it back and they deconstruct it,” Porowski says, his chestnut eyes widening. He continues to explain what the restaurant does that makes it so special: under the skin they mix brioche, truffles and butter, cut off the breast and slice it, transforming the whole breast into a “nice little heart. Then they take the thigh meat and they toss it in an aioli,” he adds. “They take the wings and they remove them from the bone so it's the whole wing and they fry it so it's crispy and super moist.” It’s no wonder Porowski is so beloved on Queer Eye. The way he describes the process is almost as sensual as it is artistic. And his charm, well, that’s just an added bonus.
But the restaurant also holds another significance: one of its dishes inspired a recipe in his new cookbook, Antoni In The Kitchen, out now. It’s not the chicken, though: it’s essentially butter-dipped radishes. He takes me through the recipe: tempering the butter, whisking it until it’s in liquid form but “still fully opaque”, dipping the cold radishes so that the butter clings to them. “My version has pink peppercorns and chives so that they're speckled. They look a little Christmasy,” he says with a sparkle in his eye. Yes, Porowski wants me – and you – to know that he can cook.
But Porowski is careful about how he’s labeled. He doesn’t refer to himself as a chef, but a “home cook”. Porowski simply isn’t pretending to know more than he does. But what he does know he’s good at.
The Montreal-born TV personality and actor never went to culinary school. After studying psychology at Concordia University, Porowski moved to New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School Of The Theatre. Shortly thereafter, he met Ted Allen, the food and wine connoisseur of the original Queer Eye, whom he worked for as an assistant. Still, he never thought he’d be working with food in a professional capacity. “I guess that's what life is. You have all these plans and these hopes and these dreams and then suddenly opportunities arise and it's sort of like, 'OK, I guess this is what I was supposed to be doing,’" he explains. Porowski discovered Queer Eye was being rebooted through a manager friend of his who said, “They wanted a more diverse cast, turning the Red States pink.” Porowski was apprehensive, so he called a mentor, which is something he does when he’s struggling. That mentor was Allen, who had already been made aware of the reboot and thought Porowski would be a wise choice. “He's like, "You love talking about food. What I like is that you're not a chef. Everything that you've learned has all been out of the joy and the passion for it, so it comes from this pure place. It's just a normal guy who loves food is here to teach you about it,” he recalls. Plus, his background in acting and entertainment didn’t hurt.
Since 2018, Porowski has been a part of Queer Eye’s Fab Five as the show’s food and wine expert, alongside fashion expert Tan France, culture expert Karamo Brown, design expert Bobby Berk and grooming expert Jonathan Van Ness. And his life has transformed completely. Last year he opened up his first restaurant in New York City’s West Village – a fast-casual spot called The Village Den. Earlier this year, he starred in the music video from Taylor Swift’s LGBTQ+ anthem “You Need To Calm Down” and now he just released his first cookbook.
For his cookbook, Porowski needed to come up with 100 recipes, which he describes as ones “that didn’t make it into the episodes of Queer Eye". But his editor, Rux Martin, didn’t want anything too “gimmicky”. “She was like, ‘You are your best on Queer Eye when you're most yourself and you open up and be vulnerable. Let's treat the cookbook the exact same way,’” he recalls. Porowski found himself remembering the food he consumed as a broke college student. His love of frozen peas, for instance, resurfaces in a lot of the book’s recipes. The book even features one of the first things he taught himself to make: a Champagne and lemon risotto he used to make for his acting buddies when they were studying for a play. “We would always have cheap prosecco left over and [use] just two cups. Arborio rice, which is short-grain rice used in risotto, is relatively inexpensive,” he says, though admittedly he made it “incorrectly for three years straight”. The dish, and the time in his life it signifies, has stuck with him. “The book is basically my own version of an autobiography, but as told through food,” he says. His cookbook is, of course, a visual journey equipped with images of Porowski strolling through his favourite parts of New York City with some photos that could be deemed “thirst traps”.
In some ways, Porowski’s path to fame has been jarring for him. Before Queer Eye he was sending his headshots out to casting directors, trying to get their attention. But then the show happened, bringing him endorsements, his book and public speaking tours. “That was a total switch of how the energy worked in my life. People suddenly started caring,” he says.
Queer Eye has transformed Porowski in ways he never could have imagined. Whether he was dating a girl or a guy, he never displayed PDA in any relationship. But meeting France, he now holds hands with him. “I never thought I would be that person. With all of them, there's a level of comfortability that I've gained,” he says.
Porowski also uses this as an opportunity to tell me this is the first interview that hasn’t brought up “JVNtoni” – the Instagram post of him and Van Ness kissing on 4 July. But he quickly confirms that the PDA photo was a joke. They turned the rumour of a relationship into a satirical Instagram account called “@jvntoni”, on which Porowski can be seen feeding Van Ness a chocolate bar or dancing with him.
Overall, working with the Fab Five has helped him “get to a place where I’m a lot more comfortable in my skin”. He prefers to live without a label, though “fluid” or “queer” comes close. “I don’t really know and I kind of like not knowing,” he says of his sexuality. While he’s been dating men for several years, he’s been in more relationships with women and wants to be sensitive to both. “I feel like if I do refer to myself as gay, which would make it easier for people to understand sometimes, I feel like it dishonours women that I've been in love with,” he says.
Still, Porowski harbours a lot of anxiety. He’ll be the first to tell you. He’s been going to therapy since he was 17. “I'm very afraid in life, of everything, the small things, the big things,” he explains. “But the one thing that I've always prided myself on is the fact that I really get off on fear.” He truly enjoys being scared and leans in to it. That extended into Queer Eye. “Part of me didn't want to go [on the show]. I was thinking, ‘I'm not gay enough. I'm not enough of a chef. I'm not all of these things.’” The series has been a platform for him to share himself: what it was like growing up fluid or as a child of Polish immigrants. “Any opportunity to advocate for mental health awareness is incredibly important because it's something that I've struggled with and I continue to struggle with, but I'm figuring it out,” he says. He’s also been trying to figure out how to make his ADHD and social anxiety assets and not liabilities instead of “feeling sorry for myself, which I spend a lot of my life doing”.
Being labelled as a “sex symbol” has remained an adjustment for him, though. “I did not think that I was going to be objectified as a 34-year-old male, that usually happens for guys in their twenties,” he laughs. Regardless, he’s always been more concerned with people thinking because he’s naive that he’s dumb. “I used to do this thing where any opportunity I'd remind somebody that I have an educational background,” he says. “I went to university, I'm not an idiot, I read a ton of books. I've kind of calmed down on that a little because I think with physical appearance it's always assumed that you're a dumb ass.” Porowski considers the “sex symbol” part of himself a character or performance art. It’s something he plays in to on his Instagram, where he poses in his underwear and posts something self-deprecating or funny. “I think it's a reminder to enjoy myself in the process, because I take myself really seriously,” he says.
But Queer Eye has helped him shift to looking outward, rather than inward, since it’s really about helping the “hero”. “That's so much less pressure on myself than trying to be cool,” he says.
Porowski’s interactions on Queer Eye with the “heroes” have been endearing. “We have to be real with these heroes. These are real human beings who are opening up their lives to us, even if just for a week. Imagine doing that, opening up about things you can barely show with anybody, with five complete strangers. That can be really uncomfortable. I think we have a responsibility to just be the truest version of ourselves that we possibly can be,” he says.
However, it’s his pure unadulterated joy that’s resonated with fans. For one, Porowski has an extreme obsession with corgis and was surprised by a corgi named Oscar in series four, which made for internet fodder. “I must have looked like such a loser, obsessed with dogs like the way that I am when I talk about cheese. But people respond when somebody is real and vulnerable. I'm not always going to be cool,” he admits. “So I learned to let my guard down and lean into all the weird shit that I like.”
Still, he’s human. I bring up the guacamole recipe debacle of Queer Eye’s inaugural episode, in which Porowski added a generous amount of Greek yogurt to his recipe, creating mass hysteria online. His choice was divisive and bred a lot of criticism around his cooking skills. “I'd be lying if I didn't think, ‘Oh, opportunity for a cookbook? This is where I really get to show people.’ Village Den is another opportunity where I get to show people,” he says. Porowski, a self-proclaimed “charmer by nature”, has always wanted to be accepted and liked by everyone. But he knows everyone will have their own opinions. For Porowski, the most important thing is that he keeps his own intentions in mind: “I always want to feel like I'm doing the right thing, like I'm being a good person.”
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