Sirius XM Podcasts This episode contains explicit language.
Antony, so I feel like you strike me as a person who's very kind, thoughtful, sensitive.
But I also have a theory about you. I think that maybe underlying that kind-hearted Canadian attitude is also a person who has very strong opinions about food.
I do. So let me hit you with a few quick Antony hot takes here, okay?
Sure. You grew up in Montreal, which is famous for its bagels.
What is the best bagel place in Montreal?
St. Viator. St. Viator Bagels. After Polish school every Saturday, my dad would go and get a dozen sesame seed bagels and I would get like the 13th and it would always be warm and perfect.
And I would dip it in this, It's like a smoked salmon spread that was just fantastic.
And you're not a poppy person. I am in desserts, but for bagels I just, I love the, there's something about like the sweetness and the crunch of sesame seeds that I just, I much prefer.
A poppy seed doesn't bring much to a bagel.
It doesn't. I've heard you say that you never order chicken in a restaurant.
That's a lie. I did say that. I did say that.
Okay. But that's a lie. As soon as you said that, I got the image of someone from the kitchen at Nomad here in New York, and they serve the... greatest chicken I've ever had in my life.
It's deconstructed chicken. So the chicken breast is In between the skin and the breast, it's like a truffle brioche spread.
Oh, my word. And then the chicken thighs...
The chicken thighs are removed from the bone and tossed in like a nice citrusy aioli with some like supremes of like grapefruits and stuff.
But that one changes every time. And then the chicken wings...
I don't know how the hell they do this, but they remove it fully from the bone and it's kind of like a panko crust and they're just beautifully crispy.
But 95% of the time, chicken's for home.
This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
And before we get to the show, exciting news for those of you in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.
I'm going to be at the Salem Lit Fest in Salem, Mass. on September 6th at 1130 a.m.
I'll be on a panel called Cooking the Books, Cookbook Authors from Concept to Cookbook.
It's hosted by Adam Cowett of America's Test Kitchen.
We'll be joined by two more authors, Maggie Pearson from Feast and Fettle and Tammy Dunrow-Inman.
And even more exciting, all the events at the Salem Lit Fest are free.
So come on down. Go to SalemLitFest.org for info.
All right, let's get into it. Anthony Perovsky is one of the stars of Queer Eye, the Netflix reboot of the early 2000s show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
The premise? A group of five queer experts does a full lifestyle makeover for someone who needs it.
Each of the fab five focuses on one aspect of this hero's life.
Clothing, grooming, interior design, culture, and of course, food, which is where Antony comes in.
His job is to help the subject of each episode learn to cook something and to help them use food as a way to connect.
There's the episode with John, whose 10-year-old daughter sees him as a man-child.
When Anthony finds out John's daughter often makes her own breakfast, he teaches John to make pancakes for her.
Then there's an episode with Tyreek, a young man who'd been homeless and estranged from the woman who raised him.
Anthony shows him how to make crab boil for her.
I want Tyreek to have a fun experience, something that gets him connected to food.
Crab boil is something that's very emotional to him.
It ties him to family. It's not the most technical recipe.
It's actually really simple. In July, the show announced it would come to a close after next season, its 10th, which will take place in Washington, D.C.
Before Queer Eye, Antony was an actor and he worked as a gallerist and personal assistant.
In college, he studied psychology. But wherever he was, good food was always close by.
Like when he worked in restaurants as a waiter and busser.
One of those jobs is at an Italian spot in Montreal.
We had like Monday nights, almost nobody would work because that was like the least busy day.
And so we would do like a potluck. And I became obsessed with risotto because I was broke and I wanted to make something nice.
And people who work in restaurants like no good food.
And so I would get like a bottle or two of Prosecco, some Arborio rice, a bunch of lemons, big hunk of parm. and some like really good chicken broth that either I made my own or I had some from like a market or whatever.
And I would just make a perfect risotto and everyone would bring like a bottle of wine and then we would all go out afterwards.
It was the first time that I'd actually made food for other people.
Growing up, food was so incredibly important in my home.
But my mother is a lot like me in many ways, like didn't want anyone in the kitchen helping her.
So I sat on the other end of the kitchen table and I just like stared and watched.
And I was just kind of like transfixed and like taking it all in and like learning.
So when it came time, when I had my own life in my own apartment and I was able to do that, I already kind of like had some of those tools and then I understood.
Because I always judged her for it. I was always like, why won't you let me help you?
Because I never cut the onions right. I never cut the carrots right.
And I had like such a resentment and then I understood and I was like, oh no, it feels really good to like be able to like do the whole thing yourself.
It's hard for me to ask for help in the kitchen.
Yeah, I'm the same way. You know, I want to be the kind of person who's like, hey, you do this, you do that.
Hey, everyone's going to help. I was at a friend's house last night and she was like, hey, can you help put these... hors d'oeuvres together, you chop the dates, you do the spread.
And I was like, it's so nice. And you know, it gives everyone something to do, but I'm still like, but they might not chop it just right.
Right. But then, but then if you watch like salt, fat, acid, heat, and you see Samin, I forget what it was that she was doing, but she had a friend over and she had them partake in making this dish.
Thank you. And they were so excited to eat it afterwards because they felt empowered and she got to teach them something in the process.
There's an element of like making it something that's inclusive there.
I'm really trying to be that person. It's very hard, but I wish I could do more of that.
You and me both, someday. That love of food, though, and how you felt it was so important, was that something that your parents instilled in you?
Totally. I mean, growing up... Like my most cherished memories as a kid were breakfast and dinner.
Breakfast was always a massive spread with like a fresh cut open papaya with lime juice and a bit of salt. any type of like fresh berries and because we're polish we just had a ton of charcuterie everywhere from the polish deli and rye bread and like good cold butter and eggs.
And like for dinner, it was always a production.
My parents traveled a lot and whenever we would travel with them, it was always about like, where are we gonna eat?
When we're having breakfast, we were thinking about like, where are we going for dinner?
Which market are we going to? But so I think kind of part of what I'm driving at here, Antony, is that it seems like food really matters to you.
Like in a way beyond just sort of like, look, we love to eat.
It's delicious. Some people care more about every meal than others.
You're someone who cares a lot about eating delicious food.
But like it seems like it matters to you beyond that.
It's incredibly important to me. I think it's honestly like even if I get ground turkey and some carrots and celery and I do a nice little mix for my dog, I know that she's just a dog, but it makes me feel so good knowing that I made something for her. or even scrambled eggs on a Saturday morning after a workout and watching the joy in their faces when you made something successfully, when it's really good.
Or when people try something for the first time and you got to be there for that.
It's everything. Anthony was not the obvious choice for Queer Eye's food expert.
As much as he loves food, he's not a professional chef.
He has no formal culinary training. and he was going up for the job against lots of people who were chefs.
He says he struggled with imposter syndrome, but Queer Eye picked him anyway.
The show was a big hit right off the bat when it debuted in 2018, and it made Antony a food celebrity overnight.
But food celebrity was not a title he ever expected to have.
Food for me has always been something that's been really intimate and kind of private.
And I think until Queer Eye came out, I've always been a very compartmentalized person.
When it comes to my sexuality and food in particular, and Queer Eye is something that just ripped those two compartments and just shoved them in with everything else in the public space.
The reaction to the Queer Eye reboot was overwhelmingly positive.
It's a feel-good reality show where the goal is to find people who've experienced hardship and help them improve their lives.
But a lot of people found fault with Antony and the way he cooked.
His critics didn't like that he put Greek yogurt in guacamole.
They said the dishes he made were too simple.
A website called Junkie said maybe Antony was, quote, an incredibly handsome person hired to act like a food expert.
Eater suggested the main reason he got the gig was that he knew Chopped host Ted Allen, who was the food expert on the original Queer Eye.
It was crazy to me looking back when Queer Eye first came out, how many of the stories about you started with like, but can this guy actually cook?
Right. And, you know. I would imagine that was a tough thing to deal with if you're someone who's already kind of like tends towards imposter syndrome.
It's literally the worst thing you could possibly hear when you're already thinking about yourself and then you have people who are saying that.
And all I saw was that. I took out all of the good and I just focused in on all of the bad and it made me miserable. you know, my therapist told me this when the show came out, she was saying, she's like, well, for someone like you who like so needs to be loved by everybody, she's like,
That's impossible now. You're like a public person.
The numbers game just like increased exponentially and they're going to be a lot more people who like you, but there also can be a lot more people who don't like you or don't like what you do or are critical for valid or invalid reasons, whatever the case may be.
Despite that advice, Anthony still felt compelled to win over as many people as he could.
It motivated me to write a first cookbook so that I can prove to people that I could actually cook.
Because people, I think a lot of people, thought that the dishes that I was preparing on Queer Eye for the Heroes were a reflection of my own knowledge, which they are, but there are a lot of plenty other things that I know how to do.
You said that sort of you feel like part of why you got the job was that you're accessible, that you're a great communicator.
It was more about that than it was about culinary expertise.
And I wonder, like, do you think that being very good looking ever sometimes works against you?
Like people think that if you're good looking, that's why you got a certain opportunity.
Totally. Absolutely. And I've spoken to people who have had to fight against that.
I think I'm not gonna say everybody, but I think that for certain people, it's hard to imagine that somebody can be more than one thing. they struggled with me during the casting process of Queer Eye because I think there was this assumption that it was like, oh, no, he's a struggling actor who's coming in and wants to be on a show, so this is going to be his thing.
And near the end of casting, I made a comment.
We were in one of the show creator's homes, and I was like, oh, you have a really cool Roger Sprunger table in your living room.
And Roger Sprunger was this designer in the 60s or 70s.
And I'm obsessed with vintage furniture and post-war art.
And they all kind of looked at me like, how the fuck?
Like, what? How did you know that? And I was like, oh, that's like another one of my passions.
And like, they get me really excited. And they were like, oh, so you like that kind of stuff too.
And I feel like then they started to realize, oh no, like he's more than just like this one thing.
But I see that as like, it's like a fun challenge because you get to kind of like prove people wrong.
Do you feel pressure to maintain a certain body image?
Yes. Especially since you're more in the public eye?
100%. I think... In particular with, you know, the first time that I saw my scenes in Queer Eye, I would notice like certain mannerisms that I have.
And the same went for kind of like what my appearance was.
I think that has more to do with self... imposed comparison, namely Instagram, which is like, get me on the, you know, the wrong day.
And if I open up Instagram and I see my explore page and then suddenly it's like, gonna have juices and salad today and for the next three days i'm not gonna have like any carbs and i know that a lot of that is self-imposed and um That happens on days usually when like I wake up and I'm not feeling super confident when I'm like there's a relationship with that and the imposter syndrome and all of that, because then I fall into compare and despair. where I don't criticize other people, I really make up for it with myself.
Like I can be my own worst critic. And that's a tricky balance as well, because I do love to eat healthy.
I do love to work out and to be very active and go on hikes and do all kinds of activities and box and and do all that kind of stuff.
But at one point, it's kind of like, okay, am I doing this to feel better?
Am I doing this because I'm trying to attain some kind of an unrealistic ideal?
Or are you doing it to sort of like punish yourself for something you shouldn't be punishing yourself for?
Totally. You've described yourself as an emotional eater.
That seems to be like it must be a difficult thing to navigate, which is like a lot of pressure to maintain a certain body image, but also food as a way to... deal with certain feelings and I don't think I personally think like emotional eating in moderation is fine like once in a while you treat yourself have a totally have a giant ice cream sundae, have a pizza.
Absolutely. But I wonder how you navigate those two, that seem like possible, contrasting extremes.
Yeah, and I am definitely a person of extremes.
If I take something on, I do it a million percent. with the emotional eating part, it's like, I try to just check in and this is like a daily thing for me that I kind of like check in on.
The ice cream sundae, If it starts to happen where it's only happening on really shitty days, that's a sign.
If it's only happening on really good days, that's a sign as well.
It's not a sign of what? a sign that I'm kind of like, am I trying to get out of my feelings If I reward myself for something, that's one thing.
And sometimes you're just having a really bad day.
And all I want is like a vat of mac and cheese or like a whole entire pizza to myself. and that's fine, but I just try to make sure that I don't do that consistently and develop habits or patterns with that.
Same goes with punishing myself. Punishing is a strong word, but kind of like being very careful about what I eat and only eating like really healthy food.
It's like everything in moderation, even moderation.
Coming up, Antony and I talk about the principles of great salads, and he nearly collapses at the mere mention of one of his favorite dishes.
Plus we find out if writing a cookbook as a way of proving yourself actually works.
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Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman.
We try to settle some food disputes, including one between a married couple about how to reheat leftovers.
Tyler, do you acknowledge that some foods are better reheated in the microwave than other methods?
I don't know if I would be willing to acknowledge that.
I mean, I certainly agree it's more convenient, but I really like using our cast iron skillet and...
I don't know if I would be willing to admit that anything is better in the microwave.
It is always fun when we take calls from sportful listeners.
Check this one out. It's up now. Okay, back to my conversation with Antony Perovsky.
After that first season of Queer Eye, Anthony continued to work through his imposter syndrome with the help of a therapist.
The second season of the show aired the same year, and there were two more in 2019.
Then Antony published his first cookbook, Antony in the Kitchen.
You know, the one he said he wrote in response to people saying he didn't know how to cook.
So I wondered, did writing a cookbook to prove his haters wrong actually work?
Yes and no. I don't know actually, I don't know if it worked.
But I think once it started, I definitely, if I'm like being 100% honest, I went in wanting to prove myself.
And I did have ideas that were like a lot more ambitious and things that I wanted to make, but I remember when I had my first meeting with Rux Martin, my editor at Houghton, we were talking about the perfect byte.
And the perfect byte for me is a Majul date or a Rutab date, but they're a lot harder to find. with a Marcona almond, a little bit of blue cheese wrapped in like prosciutto or bacon.
And it's salty, sweet, sticky, crunchy. It just like checks all the boxes for me.
And she was like, stop, like, just keep it simple.
I want that to be, that's going to be a recipe in your book, by the way.
And just kind of like take it from there.
And I kind of like... lost myself in it and then i kind of forgot that my intention was trying to prove myself to people and i just kind of got really excited by being like oh my gosh like There was a raspberry moose dome that my mother used to make for like literally every single special occasion and every Christmas. bigos which is like this hunter stew and like stuff that i ate when i was a student when i was like really broke and like cannellini beans with tomato paste and a bit of like fresh oregano and lemon juice and put a can of olive oil soaked tuna in there.
And it was like, wow, like I remember eating that all the time when I was broken in school.
And then I just kind of like, forgot about my original intention thank goodness because i was able to just get the hell out of my own head and trying to prove myself and just fell in love with the process of recipe developing and remembering all of these food memories So you ended up with something that was true to you and something you were proud of.
Yes. And so in that sense, it did solve the problem, just in a different way than what you anticipated.
Not at all the way that I thought it would, which is usually how life turns out.
Instead of proving something to other people, you convinced yourself, right?
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I never actually thought of that, but yeah.
That's pretty cool. Yeah. I think you should feel good about that.
Oh. Yeah. This has been a big breakthrough, Anthony.
I've had a few breakthroughs with you today, actually.
Two years after Antony's first cookbook came out, and with nearly 50 episodes of Queer Eye under his belt, he published a second cookbook called Let's Do Dinner.
He wrote it with his co-author, Mindy Fox.
In the intro, he outlines his approach to dinner, eat plant-based early in the week, then progress to some heartier dishes as the week goes on, then cross over into comfort food on the weekend.
I want to highlight a couple of the recipes in the new cookbook in particular.
Roasted cabbage steaks. And I love cabbage.
I love that you write, cabbage is having a moment, which means that by default, Poland is too.
I hated cabbage as a kid. There was something about the smell and the preparation.
Like my mother is an excellent home cook.
But there are certain things that she was taught probably by her mother that Polish mothers have been making all the time. and they would just boil the shit out of cabbage just like they would Brussels sprouts and they would be mushy and brown and they would add a little bit of cumin and that was it. the cabbage steak is like, it's such a symbol for, I felt okay being Polish when I was growing up and then I moved to a rural community in West Virginia. where there wasn't that much diversity.
And suddenly my name was weird. The fact that I spoke different languages was weird.
I had a weird accent. My lunches were even weirder.
And I suddenly had this shame for who I was.
And I wanted nothing to do with being Polish.
I actually forgot Polish. In a matter of two years, my parents were pissed. sent me back to Montreal.
I had a Polish French tutor because I forgot French as well.
I started working in a Polish restaurant that used to be owned by my auntie, where my dad was a waiter, where my sisters both worked.
It's like the rite of passage in Montreal to work at Stash Cafe.
It still exists. It's awesome. They make the best pierogies the grandmas make them in the basement.
I referenced it in the first book and it's just so awesome. and the best cabbage rolls ever.
Okay. With a nice little paprika-y tomato sauce, not with the creamy mushroom sauce like they do with Veselka.
Veselka's great in New York, but I'm not crazy about that one.
I knew you had strong opinions about food.
I do, I do, I do, I do. You got it out of me. but um i started working at this restaurant suddenly i was like oh cool like young polish people who are actually proud to be polish and like that's actually okay and so Here's this like cabbage steak thing that for me was inspired by like, I tried to think like, what would ABCV come up with?
One of my favorite restaurants in New York.
And it's just giving life and really highlighting beautiful vegetables that are just bright and colorful and coming up with a really nice applesauce that's just like really creamy and some like raisins for like a nice little tart bite to it and getting like that char on the cabbage.
And it's like now I freaking love cabbage.
Yeah, I'm excited to cook that one because I love cabbage too.
You have an array of salads in the book.
Is there like a... a blueprint for a good salad?
Like what are the basic elements that any good salad has to have?
One of the most important things is definitely which greens you're going to use.
If you have baby arugula or spinach, You have to kind of eat them the day of.
Kale will actually like a mature kale will still be pretty good the next day.
It just softens up really nicely, but it's also knowing how to treat the greens as well and knowing what kind of a vinaigrette to put.
The only thing worse than an underdressed salad is like an overdressed salad where it's just like swimming in dressing or vinaigrette or whatever it is that you're putting on it. having a crunch element.
If it's not going to be a crouton, that's soaked in like a really nice vinaigrette just to soften it up a little bit.
I love using nuts. I feel like for salads, texture, a variety of textures is key.
You need something acidic and something fatty together, and that needs to be in the right balance.
Totally, with the vinaigrette, yeah. Yes, to me, one of the most under considered part of salad composition is that it needs to be forkable, the different pieces, you need to be able to get them together into a bite.
I love nuts in a salad, but I feel like you need something for the nuts to stick to.
They got to cling. I also like the Caesar salad where it's like a gigantic half loaf of romaine lettuce that they serve with a steak knife in a restaurant.
Like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?
I know. Just so irritating. It looks great, but it's form over function.
One thing I will say, and this was something I learned from the great Alice Waters, I was having a meal with her once at Via Corota, and we were having their famous insalata verde with that awesome vinaigrette.
She was eating the salad and she just started picking it up with her fingers.
And she was like, salad tastes really good when you eat it with your hands.
And I was like, that's crazy. And then I did it and I was like, you are absolutely right.
Yes. Yes. Part of the reason why eating a salad with your hands works is like, it is just kind of fun, but also again, bite composition.
You have better control over bite composition where you can like fold the leaf over with your fingertips and get it all in your mouth.
If it was long leaves of romaine and if I can pick them up with my hands and just hold the stem end, that I can get behind.
So then you'll really enjoy, we have little romaine rafts with Turkish meatballs and grilled eggplant in the book as well.
That's like really nice, which is like, That's how I like to eat during the week because it's like so textural.
It's crunchy. You have like a nice, perfect meatball and then the chewiness of your eggplant that's seasoned just right.
I mean, that sounds fantastic. You remind me, I've been on a big larb kick.
The Thai dish. Anthony just collapsed on his couch.
Fucking love larb so much. It's so good.
The ground meat and you get all those different flavors together and the fish sauce and the lime and the crunch. tons of lemon I put tons of lemongrass in there I put in the cilantro stems all of it it's so good it's healthy it's packed with so much flavor.
You need a nice aggressive hit of lime at the end.
You get some beautiful Fresno chilies in there or some nice little like Thai birds, like really thinly sliced that just kind of like hit you.
And then that fish sauce. It's one of my favorite things.
Would you describe yourself as a perfectionist in the kitchen?
If I make a mistake, like I used to really beat myself up for it, especially I was very good at like sitting down and being like, okay, so this like pasta that I made, like, it's just slightly overcooked.
Cause I took it out when it was al dente, but it sat in the sauce too long.
And then I would kind of like beat myself up over it before people had even the opportunity to enjoy a dish.
Now I'm just kind of like, I just don't take it as seriously anymore where it's sort of like, oh, well, if I made a mistake now, like, I won't make it next time, hopefully, and I'll learn from it.
What changed? Wow. These are really good questions by the way.
Oh, thanks. I'm really glad I'm very caffeinated. what's changed i think the more that i you know what it is like i just stopped caring about trying to be perfect because it's actually impossible and it kind of makes me think a little bit about queer eye as being in like living in the public space now and imposter syndrome is, certainly makes its way.
Like I just have some days where I wake up and I'm just like, I'm a fraud.
And then I have other days where it's just not really there.
And now I'm at a stage, I think in my life where I've kind of accepted the fact that it's there and I don't try to like push it away or fight against it.
And I just accept it as a thing. And if I wake up and I'm feeling 60%, I'm just going to do like 100% of that 60%.
And there's a freedom that came with that where my shoulders just kind of dropped and I was like, I'm just going to be me and I'm going to continue to be inherently curious and obsessive over food and try to be better for myself and for whoever has to put my food in their mouth.
That's Antony Perovsky, food and wine expert on Queer Eye.
You can find his cookbook, Let's Do Dinner, wherever books are sold.
And you can watch a series he hosted with Nat Geo called No Taste Like Home.
It's on Disney+. Next week on the show, I head to my friend Irene Yoo's bar in Brooklyn so she can school me in Korean drinking culture.
We also invite Peter Kim along to share some of his recipes for a classic drunk food, ramen.
But it's not any old ramen. It's new twists on ramen from Peter's new cookbook.
All that is next week. While you wait for that one, check out our call-in show with Dan Pelosi and Nagin Farsad.
It's a ton of fun. It's up now. This episode was produced by me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara.
This episode was edited by Tracy Samuelson.
Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman. And I'm Laura Lynn Hildebrand from Winnipeg, Canada, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
