Antoni Porowski has opened up about the most emotionally challenging episode he has filmed for his National Geographic series No Taste Like Home — and it centered on a journey that was about far more than food.
The Queer Eye alum spoke at Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Summit on Thursday, joining a panel focused on the power of embracing discomfort through travel. According to PEOPLE, Porowski reflected on filming the show’s second episode, in which he traveled to Korea with actress and comedian Awkwafina — a country she had not set foot in since the age of four, when she visited for her mother’s funeral.
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A Journey Shaped by Grief
Porowski described the Korea episode as fundamentally different in tone from the rest of the series, explaining that the weight of Awkwafina’s personal history with the country made filming genuinely “intensely emotional” in ways that required a completely different approach from the team.
He noted that when a person is navigating something as psychologically heavy as deep-rooted anxiety combined with unresolved grief, the job of the host shifts considerably. Rather than simply guiding someone through a cultural and culinary experience, Porowski described spending much of the episode checking in on Awkwafina’s emotional state, ensuring she had space to connect with people from her own culture who could speak to her experience with real authenticity, and at times quite literally holding her hand through the more difficult moments.
He described the episode as requiring constant attention to where she was emotionally throughout the day — acknowledging that she had genuinely wanted to make the journey, but that wanting something and being ready for it are not always the same thing.
The Identity at the Center of It All
Awkwafina, who is half Chinese-American and half Korean, has spoken publicly about feeling she doesn’t fully belong to either side of her heritage. Porowski, whose own parents emigrated from Poland and Belgium, said he found that sense of in-between identity deeply familiar — something he described as a shared experience for many immigrants and children of immigrants that demands sensitivity and care rather than easy resolution.
He was candid about the ongoing challenge of balancing the genuine emotional depth of these celebrity journeys with the need to create television that also resonates with and holds the attention of a broader audience — describing the task as “tricky AF” during the panel.
The Wider Series
No Taste Like Home is a six-part series in which Porowski travels with a different celebrity in each episode to their ancestral homeland to explore their cultural roots through food. Florence Pugh traveled with him to England, where she discovered an unknown ancestor. James Marsden joined the series for a journey to Germany, among other episodes.
No Taste Like Home is currently streaming on National Geographic.
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