Coming
around to the last of my Favorite “Characters” posts about the Fab Five. Last
but not least is food and wine expert Antoni, who addresses heroes’ lives in
the kitchen.
By
the time I started watching Queer Eye,
the show had already been out for a while, and I quickly found the jokes online
about how Antoni really isn’t that impressive. People complained that the
cooking skills he displayed weren’t anything special, and there were memes
about how all he added to the show were good looks and avocados. But for me,
that wasn’t at all when I saw when I watched Antoni at work.
Plenty
of the heroes on the show do not cook. Like, at all, to the point where their friends and family confide that
they’re pretty sure this person doesn’t know how to make toast. Antoni’s job,
then, on the show, isn’t to turn them into virtuoso chefs. It’s to 1) help them
reframe the way they think about food and 2) teach them some simple basics to
get them started on their cooking journey.
That
lesson looks different for different people. The priority might be to introduce
fresh ingredients to someone who only eats processed foods. It might be to add
variety for someone who consumes nothing but protein shakes. It might be to
learn how to make some kind of hors d’oeurves or dish to share that looks/tastes
great but won’t require slaving in the kitchen. It might be to learn a recipe
that a hero can prepare together with their kids, or it might be to spend time
with their mom or grandma learning how to make the foods that are part of their
cultural heritage.
And
when viewed through that lens, Antoni’s role is an important one. Sometimes a
hero has a little more experience in the kitchen and they can handle more ambitious
dishes, but sometimes they’re starting at square one, and Antoni meets them
where they are. Even if it’s something as basic as how to hold a knife, he goes
through it and doesn’t make the hero feel dumb or ignorant for not knowing it.
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