Remember dinner parties? In a time when gatherings are still strictly prohibited in many places, they feel like a distant dream. “I genuinely don’t remember the last time I had one!” Antoni Porowski told me from his apartment in New York City when we caught up over the phone. The Queer Eye food and wine expert, who has recently partnered with HelloFresh, knows a thing or two about preparing a delicious dinner—it happens to be the theme of his upcoming cookbook, Let’s Do Dinner.

I had to know what Antoni’s dream dinner party looks like, but the conversation *did* get a tad derailed when the topic of his close personal friend—and my imagined BFF—Taylor Swift came up (I couldn’t help but pry for details about my queen!). A passionate Swiftie himself, Antoni indulged my curiosity and even spilled some details about Taylor’s cooking habits.

Read on for delightful dinner party inspo, a menu fit for Taylor and Antoni’s biggest dinner party fail (relatable). Fair warning, your stomach *will* be grumbling by the end.

If you could invite any guest to your dream dinner party, dead or alive, who would it be?

“I was just reading Joan Didion’s collection of essays; I love her as a writer and I would love to have a conversation with her, so she would be on the list. I also always have a copy of On The Road next to my bed whenever I travel, even if I don’t read it—it’s just kind of my own personal bible—so I would have Jack Kerouac there, too. And then, the third person I’d invite is the author of one of my favourite books, A Little Life —who’s also one of my favourite people that I haven’t seen in a long time—Hanya Yanagihara.”

A very literary dinner party! What would you serve?

“Yeah, I don’t know why I went that route! I think I would start out with a perfect baked potato with some Vermont Creamery butter and some crème fraîche and nice, big, fat tins of sustainable caviar. And then for the main—because I’m missing Montreal—something decadent like poutine with foie gras or lobster spaghetti from Joe Beef. Then for dessert, just some beautiful blackberries and blueberries in a bowl with some crème à l’érable and a nice little maple glaze on top.”

Wow, that sounds amazing

“Wait, wait! Oh my gosh, wait! I forgot that we have to finish the Quebec way with a cheese platter. One of the cheeses that I really miss and I haven’t been able to have because of travel restrictions is Oka. I miss it so much!”

 

 

Delicious. What music would you play to set the mood?

“So this is an album that I haven’t opened yet that I’m really excited for: it’s Pithecanthropus Erectus by Charles Mingus. Then, I would probably continue with something jazzy like Mark Davis or John Coltrane. From there I’d play something with lyrics—I just got the limited edition folklore album, and it’s no secret I’m obsessed with Taylor Swift, that album saved me during quarantine.”

Same

“I would listen to folklore: the long pond studio sessions, beautifully done. Wait, what’s your favourite song on folklore?”

This is such a hard question because I’m a massive Taylor Swift fan, but for me it’s “august” and “invisible string”

Antoni to his publicist: “We’re going to need five more minutes!”

‘invisible string’ is beautiful. ‘this is me trying’ is a personal favourite of mine, and then when I finally understood the meaning of ‘epiphany’ after watching the long pond sessions, I fully broke down in tears because it’s just so beautiful, knowing the story about what her grandfather went through, and then relating that to first responders and what their struggle has been like over the past year. It just destroyed me, it cracked my heart right open.”

It’s such a beautiful song. Now I must know, what would you serve Taylor Swift if you were having her over for dinner?

“Well, she loves Ottolenghi. She made the green meatballs once and they were really delicious. She likes a good pasta. I know that I would have a really nice red for her, like a Caymus, and I’d serve it with a with a nice ragù bolognese pappardelle situation. Citrus is also really fresh right now, so I would do cara cara oranges, navel oranges and blood oranges with some shaved fennel and toasted pistachios for a nice little light salad. And for dessert I would do a very simple lemon tart with a little dollop of unsweetened whipped cream with some fresh berries on the side.”

 

 

Alright, I feel like we could talk about Taylor Swift forever but back to our dinner party conversation: If you could have any of the Fab Five be your sous-chef for the party, who would you pick?

“Let’s see, we’ll go by process of elimination, because they’re like my kids—not that I’m their parent, but it’s like I love all of them differently. I would say if I wanted it to be a successful dinner party it would be Tan because although he’s never cooked for me before—which is the rudest thing in the world and I’ve cooked for him more times than I can even count!—I know that he cooks a lot for his husband and he’s an excellent baker. I cannot bake for the life of me. It’s way too precise, it’s way too calculated, I don’t like using measuring tools, and Tan would make the perfect mille feuille or some beautiful cake. Or a really nice Indian dessert, which I know he loves to make.”

Delicious! Dinner parties look really different right now—for some of us it’s just with our household or bubble—but what is your best hosting tip?

“This rings true not just for these times but all the time: The golden rule whenever you’re making food for anyone is to stick with what you’re good at. They don’t know you’ve made it a hundred times, and you can always tweak it to make it more interesting. I make this mistake all the time when I’m having somebody over who I really want to impress: I make something for the first time and it doesn’t turn out how I expected. Or order the Hello Fresh meal kit for four people because you probably shouldn’t be seeing more people than that anyway. It’s perfectly portioned out, the packaging is compostable and recyclable and you won’t have to feel bad about having any food waste.”

Hello FreshHelloFresh Meal Kit, starting at $9.69 per portion, hellofresh.ca.
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Do you have any impressive flourishes that you keep up your sleeve to really impress your guests?

“I always have something waiting in the kitchen right when people come in. I keep it extremely simple: If I have time to do some kind of an amuse-bouche or an hors d’oeuvre I do that, but if not I go to like my local market and get the best piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano I can find and serve it with some beautiful Castelvetrano olives, just to have something nice and salty to nosh on with their first cocktail.

For the table, I find the mood becomes kind of stuffy and a little intimidating when there are all kinds of knives and forks so I like to keep my table sparse. The only thing that I go a little higher-end with is good linen napkins, which I eat with every day. It feels special and is also less wasteful than using paper.”

Can you tell me about your biggest dinner party fail?

“I was in my Brooklyn apartment, which had one kitchen drawer [laughs]. For the record this was pre-COVID and actually pre-Queer Eye, but I had five friends over and I decided to roast two chickens in my tiny little oven. I have this horrible habit where I don’t wear oven mitts, I just use towels, and of course as I took them out I started to burn my hand. The whole thing fell onto the floor along with the cipollini onions, parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes—it all fell. It was literally the entire meal, and we didn’t even have an appetizer! Luckily I was with really close friends and they were like, ‘Let’s go by the one-minute rule for this’ and we just picked it back up and put it in the oven for another three minutes. Gosh, that’s such a weird thing to talk about in the age of COVID! Probably not the smartest thing, but we were young, we were post-college students at that point and it was all okay, we all survived, and the chicken was delicious—it was perfectly cooked. It would have been nice if the skin was intact, but disasters happen and life goes on. You have to make mistakes to grow from them. I’ve ruined a lot of roast chickens in my day, and now I’ve kind of perfected them.”

It’s comforting to know you’ve made mistakes in the kitchen, too!

“Oh, I still do.”

 

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