The treasure: Canadian lifestyle maven Antoni Porowski has become a TV fixture in the past few years, appearing as a food guru on Netflix’s “Queer Eye” and “Easy-Bake Battle: The Home Cooking Competition” and hosting “No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski” for National Geographic.
The new thing: Porowski recently performed a non-alcoholic cocktail demonstration at the House of Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0% pop-up in Yorkville, where car enthusiasts can check out the Scuderia Ferrari HP show car (on display in Toronto for the first time), and foodies can sample booze-free infusions and a driver-inspired pizza menu.
The details: The event runs at 131 Bloor Street West from June 5 to June 8, and June 12 to June 15.
What advice would you give to someone on how to be a good host?
From the perspective of some of somebody who makes all of the food at all gatherings, even when they’re not mine, prepare as much as humanly possible ahead of time, which I’m still trying to master and I’m a big hypocrite because I’m not good at it. But your guests want to spend time with you. That’s why they came.
What do you wish your younger self knew?
That I will eventually find my purpose. I’m not saying I fully figured it out, but the anxiety that I spent listening to music, trying to find clues about self-actualization and figuring out what I was gonna do in the world and how I was gonna contribute. But everything was gonna work itself out.
What is the best advice you ever got?
During the first round of chemistry testing, where they were figuring out like if we all got along for “Queer Eye,” they were considering other people and they invited me to go back but I had my hesitations. I told a mentor of mine “I don’t know if I should be doing this because I want to be like an actor actor. I don’t want to be an unscripted TV. I don’t like reality TV.” It wasn’t my thing at the time.
But my mentor basically told me like you have to make the mistake cause if you don’t do it and the show is a success, you’re gonna regret it. And if you do it and it’s a massive flop, it’ll open opportunities and you’re gonna learn something from it.
I was too young to understand that mistakes are amazing, if you really embrace them and if you really study them and take the time to reflect and move forward with the knowledge that you gain from these experiences. So…he was telling me to just lean into the fear.
What makes you happiest these days?
My dog. I’m gonna be away from her for a whole month and she’s undergoing a second round of like training right now in agility and stuff like that, to be even more confident in herself and so spending time with her in the country.
I’m also trying to figure out if I can make some time to get to the lake this summer and swim laps with my dad who swims 60 laps every single day, and he kicks my ass at 74. It’s a little embarrassing, but it makes him really happy, so, it’s okay, I can swallow my pride and let him beat me.
What achievement are you proudest of?
About six months ago, I finally stopped leaving my apartment with leaving candles lit by accident and then having to call a friend who lives nearby to go upstairs and make sure that they’re out, which was a big one because I get distracted very easily.
But also I went through some life stuff in the past three years and I embraced the change that came from said life things. And I used to have this idea that when “Queer Eye” came out that I wasn’t gonna change as a person, but my whole life changed and I had to embrace that if I didn’t change, I was living in denial over what was going on in my life.
So when personal things happen, whether it’s family members, friends, relationships, all that kind of stuff, I’ve really embraced the change that comes from it and the growth that comes and learning about yourself. All thanks to my therapist Carol, of course, couldn’t do it without her.
You’re from Montreal, but what do you love about Toronto?
The Canadian snacks! I was greeted in my hotel room with Coffee Crisp, All-Dressed Ruffles, Ketchup Lays…
But it’s also the people: everyone is so kind. In part of this activation there were a bunch of influencers and all the people on the team who aren’t Canadian were like, “everyone is so nice.” I always have like a smug look on my face where I’m not very humble about it and I’m like, “yeah.” Everyone’s just polite and it’s earnest and it’s real and it’s authentic and it makes me proud to be Canadian.
What skill would people be surprised to discover you have?
I am pathologically competitive. I don’t have to be number one, but I always have to keep up. I was at a friend’s wedding in Sicily last summer, and we all swam to this rock there was a look of shock when I was fully ready, like I was on the podium back in swim practice in high school, ready to go. Did I get first place? Yes. Does my friend George say that he got first place? Yes, but we’ve grown past it and we agree to disagree.
In the 1998 Japanese film “After Life,” when people die they get to pick a happy scene from their life that they get to live in forever. What scene from your life would you pick to live in forever?
Breakfasts with my family on Saturdays because we would leave Polish school, we would go to the kiszka, which is a meat shop, and get a shocking amount of charcuterie. No one should be eating that many nitrites in the morning, but it was a different time, and we would have these beautiful fruit platters. And my sister would come down, hungover with her coffee and sing Carly Simon’s “Clouds in My Coffee,” with her little glass cup, and we would all sit there. My dad would squeeze fresh clementines or the grapefruits that he was selling to support the swim team.
Dinners were stressful, but breakfasts were always very joyous because the sun was hitting and it was like a beautiful little breakfast nook, with this big raspberry bush behind and these like mint trees because they grew like weeds and there were windows everywhere, and the shade of the leaves coming in. It was at a beautiful large table and it was only our family was allowed there. When guests were over, we were in the formal dining room, but when it was just us, we were in that nook and it was always just the five of us and those were the happiest times.
