On a miserably rainy day in New York City, the W Hotel in Union Square was the perfect reprieve from the dreariness and gray skies. In here, one of the ballrooms was transformed into a winter wonderland — just in time for the Christmas season. Once you step off the elevators onto the second floor, your eyes are treated to a visual feast: immaculately dressed Christmas trees with presents stuffed beneath them, and gigantic candy-red ornaments at least five feet tall around the room. When I walked in, Antoni Porowski — one of the stars of Netflix's Queer Eye and author of the New York Times-bestselling cookbooks Antoni in the Kitchen and Let's Do Dinner — was seated on one of the luxurious couches, next to one of the many festive decorations.
Porowski is here to offer holiday gifting and hosting advice because over the last few years, he's become the go-to expert for throwing a lavish get-together or finding the right gift for that special someone in your life. Audiences have become accustomed to his fine-tuned taste on Queer Eye, which just announced that its 10th season would be its last, where he has served as the food and wine expert. Now, he's partnered with the company Snapdragon, the chip that powers many tech devices — including the ASUS Zenbook A14 (one of Oprah's Favorite Things), Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen), Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, and Oakley Meta Vanguard Glasses — to talk about how to prepare for the holidays.
Out: How did you fall in love with cooking and hosting?
Antoni Porowski: For me, it all boils down to human connection and figuring out I'm a people person through and through. I like my time on my own, but I definitely steer more towards connecting with others. I lived in a pretty chaotic household, where communication wasn't necessarily one of our fortés. Parents were doing the best they could with the tools they were given by the generation before; a tale as old as time, but food was always what brought us together. My mother prepared everything for us when we were growing up.
When I moved out and went to college, whether it was study groups or dates, making food for someone was the easiest way to connect and show my love, and it continues to be.
Tell me about an event or dinner that you hosted that you felt you learned a significant lesson from.
Literally this past weekend, I had a friendsgiving – there were eight of us guys, some of us in relationships, so some of their significant others were with their families, so it was very much a friendsgiving sort of vibe. We were all together, and typically, I let someone else fully take over, or I take care of every single element. And I thought to myself, 'Why do we need to be an extremist in the kitchen?' So I decided to start asking for help. I made the gravy a day ahead and put it in the thermos, which is a massive game-changer because I only had to put it in a pot. It was already reduced, and then I added the pan juices and a tiny bit of flour beforehand, so it was all like semi-homemade, Sandra Lee style, minus the angel food cake.
Friends of mine started asking what they could bring, and I told them, 'No, I got it covered,' but my friends insisted on bringing something and wanted to help. They were like, 'Stop being annoying.' So I had my friend Enrique grate the gruyere on the small holes of the box grater for the honey nut squash gratin. I taught my friend Tucker how to remove the little leaves from the thyme, going against how it's grown, because that's the easiest way, and you never have the stem in your food. Not only did that make my life so much easier, but I was also less stressed trying to calculate all of these different dishes being made at the exact same time. But when we sat down to eat, everyone was bragging about what they made and teaching the other person. Let people be part of the process because it makes your life easier, and it also educates them with their own takeaway.
What are your plans this year, and how do you plan to make them special?
I'm going to spend half of it in Traverse City, Michigan, which is my new favorite place in the U.S., because they have beautiful, clear, blue glacier lakes that are so bright, apparently because they're old glacier water. But it's a gorgeous area where my partner's family is from, and then we're gonna go over to Montreal, which I typically do in the middle of the woods. There's barely any cell reception at my step-mom's log cabin country house with the fireplace and that whole situation. But [another way to make the holiday season special] is making sure that I get gifts for my family well ahead of time.
Why did you decide to partner with Snapdragon this holiday season?
I use tech just as much as the next person, if not more, but I am the least tech-savvy person in the world. So when [Snapdragon] reached out, I was like 'Why?' but they sent me a list of all the different products that they're in, and some of them I've been using for years, and then others I had no idea that they were basically behind the machine.
Bose headphones. My dad's a massive Bose fan. Since we were kids, we always had the dream machine that was like a big gift when I graduated from college, because I still got to play my CDs in it. The headphones are something I've been using — tried, tested, and true. I can go on an eight-hour flight, and they're not going to hurt my ears because they're so nice and cushy, they're so soft. I saw Black Coffee perform with James Blake under the Kosciuszko Bridge over the summer, and my friend Leo was wearing the Oakley AI Meta glasses. She wore them during the concert and recorded the entire thing. Never had to look at her phone, not once during the show... Also, I want to gift one of my nephews who is going away to college next year one of these [Zenbook] laptops.
Antoni Porowski with the ASUS Zenbook A14Courtesy of Snapdragon
Any dos and don'ts when it comes to buying presents?
I'm someone who's an anti-gatekeeper. Like if I have something that I try that I love, whether it's like a new salt that I'm obsessed with, or, like a really good olive oil or a pan, even, I want everyone to know about it. But what I'm learning later in life is that it's not always a good idea to assume everyone's going to like what you like; instead, it's an opportunity to figure out what their interests are. And social media is an excellent tool for finding out what their interests are and leaning into that.
I think the don'ts are, don't make assumptions about what people need in their lives. I'm trying to be more mindful of, like, just because I travel with the Bose noise-canceling headphones, doesn't mean my friend, who travels like once a year, necessarily needs them too. You can pivot to something else that they might actually need. It's an opportunity to get to know the person more.
Last question: Obviously, I have to ask about Queer Eye ending. What are you going to miss most about the show?
We were reflecting on this at our wrap party, which was immensely emotional, and our showrunner, Jen Lane, gave a really beautiful speech. She's not much of a crier, but I know she's a bleeding heart. But watching the [production assistants] who are now producers 10 seasons in and and local people that we hire in every single city, this sort of like, living, breathing, chaotic family of like, loving and fighting and everything in between, all for the goal of like meeting these new people with where they're at and doing that time and again, I'm really gonna miss that.
I'm so excited about the other projects I'm working on and the things I've done since, but that one was so personal. It was a pretty incredible thing to be part of the lives of people who have never really had an aspiration to be on TV, who met five complete strangers, and to then, by the end of the week, this really short amount of time, to be able to see the changes in themselves and how they treat their families and how they view LGBTQIA+ people.
