Antoni Porowski has a simple rule when he lands in a new place. He looks for a grandma.
“If it’s a little restaurant with six tables and you see a grandma back there cooking, it’s probably going to be damn good,” the Polish-Canadian chef says. Food is his top travel priority. His schedule usually revolves around meals, with free time in between to explore.
Porowski is best known as the food and wine expert on Netflix’s Queer Eye. His new four-part National Geographic series, Best of the World with Antoni Porowski, premiered on June 7. It visits London, New York, Paris and Mexico City. It is available on Disney+ and Hulu.
How he finds great food
Porowski has tricks for tracking down good restaurants. He browses an “extremely chaotic” archive of saved Instagram posts. He also leans on friends’ tips.
Still, his best finds come from wandering. He looks for places with soul that are busy. “I like to go where the locals go,” he says.
Lobster rolls in Maine
Maine is one of his favourite places in the world. His top lobster roll comes from The Clam Shack in Kennebunk. It holds half a lobster on a small sweet potato bun. The lobster is cooked in ocean water, so it tastes pleasantly salty. Diners eat by the water as fishing boats pull in.
He once drove five hours from New York with his dog, Neon, and friends Chloe Hartstein and Kumi Craig. It was the last weekend before the seasonal shack closed. Afterwards, he likes to buy a big basket of wild Maine blueberries.
Steak tartare in Warsaw
Porowski travelled to Poland with his father for a cousin’s birthday. His partner, Zach, who is also Polish, joined them for his first visit. They ate at Stary Dom, an old-school, family-style restaurant. It has thick oak interiors, carved wood and servers in polka dresses.
The steak tartare impressed him most. The meat is hand-chopped, not ground, which changes the texture. It arrives with egg yolk, horseradish and pickles. He calls it sharp, balanced and meltingly tender. It was Zach’s first meal in Poland.
Rosemary ice cream in Mexico City
Filming in Mexico City was his first visit. Chef Elena Reygadas runs Rosetta and the nearby Panadería de Rosetta. He tried a viral guava roll first. He ate two, one on camera and one off.
He normally avoids repeat visits, yet he returned to Rosetta for three more meals. The tamales with huitlacoche, a corn fungus, were a highlight. Even so, his one must-have dish is dessert: rosemary ice cream with an herb salad. It is refreshing but still rich enough to satisfy.
Scrambled eggs in Paris
On a one-day Fashion Week stop in Paris, he had time for a single meal. He met a friend at Hôtel de Crillon. He ordered soft scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and a croissant.
He calls the eggs the most perfectly cooked soft scramble he has had, almost like porridge. The salmon was so delicate it melted on his tongue. The croissant came with room-temperature butter and French strawberry jam. The dim, velvet-lined lounge made the meal feel even better.
Two years later, the team filmed at the hotel. Staff showed him a room where Marie Antoinette once took piano lessons. From outside, he could see where she was later guillotined. He found it eerie.
Pork chop on Mykonos
Kiki’s Tavern sits above the Agios Sostis cove on the Greek island of Mykonos. It is a run-down shack with cats roaming and diners sipping warm rosé from paper cups. It takes cash only and has no bookings. Guests add their name to a list and swim during the wait of about 90 minutes.
Vasilis runs the place. Porowski loves Greek seafood, yet he ordered a thick pork chop that Vasilis brushed with honey water on the grill. It came out pink inside with a caramelised crust. “It was one of the best bites I’ve ever had in my life,” he says.
Guinea fowl in Emilia-Romagna
While filming No Taste Like Home, Porowski visited Locanda del Falco, a small hotel in the hills near Piacenza. Actor Justin Theroux joined him. They ordered faraona alla creta, a guinea fowl cooked in clay and stuffed with figs and lardo. Their group of five ordered two.
Theroux also shared a tip. Take a piece of good Parmigiano Reggiano and drizzle it lightly with the best balsamic vinegar you can find. Porowski bought two bottles of balsamic there. He finished them in under a month.
