The Queer Eye chef dishes on the meals he still dreams about

"One of the best bites I've ever had in my life": celebrity chef Antoni Porowski's favourite meals from around the world and why he always looks for a grandma when he travels.

Whenever Antoni Porowski visits an unfamiliar place, he looks for a grandma.

"I go with the vibe," says the Polish-Canadian chef, model and author. "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." 

Food, Porowski tells the BBC, is his "number one" priority when he travels, which is constant. "I arrive in a city, and the first thing I want is a shower, and the second thing is a bite. My entire schedule usually rotates around my meals, and then I have free time in between to get lost and explore."

Best known as the food and wine expert on Netflix's Queer Eye, Porowski has learned hacks for finding great places to eat, from browsing his "extremely chaotic archived collection of Instagram posts" to friends' personal recommendations. But he says, "the best experiences are ones I've discovered on my own, just walking down the street. I'm looking for a place that has some soul, a place that's busy. I like to go where the locals go." 

His new four-part National Geographic travel and food docuseries, Best of the World with Antoni Porowski, sees him explore four of the world's most vibrant cities: London, New York, Paris and Mexico City. The experience often proved exhilarating – "A lucha libra female wrestler kicked my ass, flipped me over and then we had a couple of tacos" – but most of all, illuminating: "[Food is] a fantastic way to get to know a people, a history and what they're into."

Here, Porowski dishes on his six most unforgettable meals around the world.

When summer hits, all I think about is the beach. One of my favourite places in the world is Maine.

There's no shortage of lobster shacks [in Maine] but there's one called The Clam Shack [in Kennebunk] that has maybe my single most favourite lobster roll. It's half a lobster, rolled up on a little circular sweet potato bun. They cook it in ocean water, so it's beautifully salty. You eat it right on the water, where you see the fishing boats pulling up.

One time, I went up there with my dog, Neon, and my friends Chloe [Hartstein] and Kumi [Craig]. We had a weekend off and wanted to escape [New York City]. We said, "Let's drive five hours each way." The Clam Shack is seasonal and closes down for winter, so this was our last chance. Neon is obsessed with lobster. Her favourite hobby is rolling around in dead fish carcasses on the beach.

It's all about having a meal at The Clam Shack, overlooking the sound and the seagulls and the whole maritime Kennebunkport vibe of Maine, followed by going to a grocery store or farmers' market and getting as big a basket as I can of wild Maine blueberries. I can eat them until the sun comes down and I'm the happiest guy in the world.

I took a trip to Poland with my dad for a cousin's birthday. My partner, Zach, who's also Polish, had never been to Poland, so we all went to Warsaw for two days. 

Steak tartare is one of those things a lot of people don't realise Polish people really excel at: chopping it up at the table, loads of egg yolk, horseradish, pickles… We went to a place called Stary Dom in Warsaw, a really old-school family-style restaurant. There's thick oak everywhere, carvings in the wood – very folkloric. Servers dress in polka dresses – it's that kind of place. But the steak tartare there just melts. Something about hand-chopping it and not putting it in the grinder or extruder changes the texture so much. It has the right amount of sharpness and it's one of the most incredible things ever.

For my father, it's a place he's been to before and he just loves the tartare. It was Zach's first meal in Poland ever. It was the perfect introduction into Polish cuisine.

Filming for Best of the World, it was my first time in Mexico City. Chef Elena Reygadas has a restaurant called Rosetta and a bakery, Panadería de Rosetta, which is less than a block away, so we had a "twofer". They took me to have a pastry first and then the savoury dish. I had a guava roll. This was one of those moments where, yes, it's all over TikTok and social media, but it was truly one of the most beautiful pastries I've ever had. It was flawless. I had two: one on-camera, one off-camera.

Then I got to meet Elena Reygadas. I had such a great time with her. We had five more nights after we filmed with her, and for three of those meals we were back at Rosetta. I'm typically not a "repeat offender" – I always want to explore a new place. But I was so obsessed. Her tamales with huitlacoche, which is mould that grows on corn, were so incredible that I just had to have more. But the one dish, if I had to go back and only have one thing, was a dessert: a rosemary ice cream with an herb salad. It was so refreshing but still had enough dairy and sugar to make you feel satisfied.

I was in Paris one time just for one day because it was Fashion Week and then I was flying out the next day.

I was able to have just one meal. I had a friend staying at Hôtel de Crillon. I met him at his hotel and I had soft scrambled eggs with smoked salmon on the side, and a beautiful croissant.

It was the most perfectly executed soft scramble I've ever had – almost like a porridge. You could see through the smoked salmon – it was delicate and melted on your tongue. Then, to end with a croissant and some room-temperature butter and a really good French strawberry jam… That meal checked all of the boxes of things I want to have, in arguably one of the most beautiful settings in Paris. It was in a loungey living room with no windows – dark and cosy, with lush velvet everywhere.

We shot at the hotel two years later for Best of the World. They brought me into a room with a piano and said, "This is the room where Marie Antoinette took piano lessons when she was a young girl." Then, when you look outside the hotel at Place de la Concorde, you can see the exact spot where she was guillotined. It was an eerie experience.

On the Greek island of Mykonos, there's a place called Agios Sostis, a beautiful little cove, and a restaurant called Kiki's Tavern. You walk up a hill and it's a falling-apart shack, with cats running around everywhere, everyone drinking warm rosé out of paper cups. It was cash-only and no reservations – you put your name down on a list. You have to wait about an hour and a half, so you go swimming. Apparently, that cove is where Aristotle Onassis used to dock his yacht.

When you go up to the restaurant, there's Vasilis, the guy who runs the show. When I was there, he didn't have busboys – it was just him doing everything.

He does salads every day – he goes to the market and picks up whatever's available. I love to eat seafood in Greece, so I never thought I'd order this, but I saw the juiciest, fattest pork chop sitting on the grill and Vasilis was slathering it with honey water. I ordered that pork chop and it was perfectly pink on the inside, juicy as hell, with a caramelised crust on the outside. It was one of the best bites I've ever had in my life.

When we were filming No Taste Like Home for Nat Geo, we were in Emilia-Romagna in Italy. There's a beautiful little hotel in the hills called Locanda del Falco, near Piacenza, where I went with [actor] Justin Theroux. We had this local specialty faraona alla creta, a beautiful guinea fowl, cooked in clay, stuffed with figs and lardo (lard). There was a group of five of us, and we ended up having two of those. It was one of the most outstanding meals ever.

Justin is someone I've known for a long time. We've travelled together a little bit. He's a good dude who loves food. He's on a par with me – he's, like, "Let's get all the appetisers and try everything." The hack he taught me was, when you're in Italy, get a nugget of Parmigiano Reggiano, the good stuff, and drizzle [the cheese] very lightly with the best balsamic vinegar you can possibly find. We found a damn good one there – I came back with two bottles that lasted me less than a month because I consumed it all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers. 

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