Antoni Porowski Goes Beyond the Guidebook in Best of the World

Antoni Porowski was just winding down the 10th and final season of Netflix's phenomenally successful Queer Eye when a proposal for a new series came through — and it was a doozy.

The idea was to take the iconic National Geographic book and magazine series Best of the World out for a spin as a television series.

Would he be game for that?

“I think, selfishly, what initially appealed to me was it touched on my love of travel and, of course, having someone fund it,” Porowski says, “but also, working for Nat Geo would be great, because really, for lack of a better word, they do pick the best of the best.”

So, you might conclude that Best of the World with Antoni Porowski is the kind of over-the-top aspirational series that features unattainable travel experiences viewers can only dream about. Not so, Porowski says. “I was very clear from the beginning of discussions that I didn’t want this to be just a thread-count show.”

Instead, Porowski and the show’s producers decided to offer viewers a mix of champagne and beer. Yes, he does visit a 20,000-euro-per-night suite at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, where services include personally monogrammed pillowcases — but he also chows down on a cheap slice in a New York City pizza shop.

And while the iconic book and magazine series tends to focus on exotic locales — the 2025 “Best of the World” list includes a lodge in Tanzania, a resort in Costa Rica and a hiking trail in Namibia — the four-part series features cities that are well known and well traveled — Paris, London, Mexico City and New York. (The first two episodes debuted June 8 on National Geographic, with the final two airing June 14; all episodes are now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.)

The decision to stick to these major metropolises evolved organically, blending “the spirit of the list” with unique experiences inside these cities that you can’t get anywhere else, notes Tom McDonald, executive vice president of content at Nat Geo.

Creating a successful travelogue series can be challenging, McDonald says. The choice of host is crucial. “Stanley Tucci’s series [CNN’s Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy] is perhaps the perfect manifestation of that. It’s a series that’s impossible to imagine without Stanley, and yet it really puts the food, culture and people of Italy front and center.”

While Porowski and Tucci have different styles, they both delight in finding the unsung people who not only live in these areas but are also the secret ingredient to what makes them so special.

“That spirit is what defines Antoni’s approach,” McDonald adds. “It’s that same spirit of wanting to hear people’s stories and experience the city the way locals do that infuses these episodes.”

That spirit also ran through Porowski’s other Nat Geo travel series, No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski, in which the host took some famous friends — Florence Pugh, James Marsden, Justin Theroux, Awkwafina, Issa Rae and Henry Golding — on a culinary exploration of their ancestral homelands.

In each of Best of the World’s featured cities, Porowski zeroes in on human-interest stories, from the clockmaker who keeps London’s Big Ben tower clock running on time to the costume designer who, now in her 90s, supervises the creation and care of the lavishly beaded and feathered ensembles for the showgirls at Paris’s famous Moulin Rouge nightclub.

“At the end of the day, I’m always fascinated by the human story behind these iconic things,” Porowski says. “These people who are so passionate about the thing they do. What can I say? I love a nerd.”

If the series is renewed, the plan is to move on to more exotic locations. Because this season’s four cities are so well known, the show explores their lesser-known locales and activities — like canoeing down the canals of Xochimilco in southern Mexico City, an extensive network of waterways the Aztecs traveled long ago; or glamping on New York’s Governors Island, a 172-acre island in New York Harbor that was a British stronghold during the Revolutionary War and now offers visitors an unparalleled view of the Lower Manhattan skyline.

“There was always a version of this that could have been all about bringing the best of the world to the screen with lots of glossy visuals,” says Nic Patten, the show’s creative director and an executive producer. “And while there is an emphasis on making things look exquisite and invitational, we didn’t want to fall into the same old track. We wanted this to be an adventure from Antoni’s perspective. We wanted the show to match his vibrancy and curiosity. He’s a very energetic guy.”

And so he is. How many travelogue hosts can keep pace on a bike with seasoned cyclists as they tackle the steep, cobblestoned climb to Paris’s Sacré-Coeur Basilica, or happily agree to being flipped by professional lucha libre wrestlers in a Mexico City arena, or plunge into 60-degree water off the docks of London’s Canary Wharf?

“It was freezing!” Porowski says with a laugh, noting that he suffers from an extreme sensitivity to cold because of a medical condition. But he was game nonetheless and says the plunge was an incredible experience.

While Porowski’s physical strength and stamina came into play in each city, so did his sense of fun and wonder. Patten says the producers leaned into that by offering behind-the-scenes access that most travelers would never have. Go backstage at the Moulin Rouge and help adorn the showgirls with feathers? No problem. Judge a drag show in East London? Sure. Put on waders and walk into ponds to feed the giant Amazonian water lilies in London’s Kew Gardens? Why not?

One exploration that did give Porowski pause was going up 95 floors to the top of The Shard, London’s pyramid-shaped skyscraper, which opened in 2012. “I have a fear of heights, and yes, I was shaking,” he admits. “I told myself when I embarked on this journey that whatever was thrown my way, within reason, just say yes. I’m still terrified of heights, but by doing these things I always learn something about myself in the process. And when I was up there, I got to see a beautiful glimpse of London. It gave me a new perspective that was amazing."

As a boy, Porowski was obsessed with the RMS Titanic. Even before James Cameron directed the film that would go on to win the Best Picture Oscar in 1998, Porowski was fascinated by the ship's history, especially the many classes of people who sank with it in 1912. "I tried to imagine what it was like to be one of those passengers," he says. The tragedy helped convince the young Porowski that he was meant to be an actor. “I liked the idea of storytelling — the directing, acting, everything about it,” he says.

But early on he pursued a different path. Born in Montreal to a family of Polish physicians, he got his university degree in psychology — “to make my family happy” — then promptly headed to New York to study acting. To make ends meet, he worked in food service, first as a waiter and later as a sommelier. While managing a sushi restaurant in 2018, he got his big break, being cast as the food-and-wine expert on Netflix’s revival of Queer Eye.

“We had just finished filming the first season of the show, and none of us had any idea if the show would take off,” Porowski says. At one point he and castmate Tan France joined Porowski’s father and stepmother for a vacation on an island in the French Caribbean.

“I remember we were saying things like, ‘Are we now supposed to go back to our old jobs, or is this going to be a thing?’” he says. It wasn’t until the cast reunited in New York for a press event and saw their images splashed across a jumbotron in Times Square that they had any inkling of what was to come. “I remember in that moment thinking, ‘Oh yeah, this might be a thing.’”

The show went on to become a hit for Netflix, running 10 seasons plus a four-episode limited series set in Japan. Porowski earned seven Emmy nominations, and in 2023 and 2025 he won with his castmates in the category of Outstanding Structured Reality Program. “I can say that the show never got old,” he says. “The cities we visited were characters; the people we helped were heroes.”

In both Queer Eye and Best of the World, it’s clear that Porowski has a passion for celebrating the joys of eating and cooking. So, each city he visits in World includes trips to restaurants and eateries that offer everything from high-end nontraditional (think Polish-Japanese fusion) to wholesome and hearty (oxtail pizza). “What I learned from Queer Eye is that teaching people how to cook and exploring their relationships with food is, in a way, its own kind of storytelling.”

Now, as host of a show that takes viewers on cultural adventures in stunning locales, Porowski has found new purpose. “A lot of the fear that people are experiencing today, while happening for a multitude of reasons, can — as my therapist says — often be attributed to a lack of embracing diversity. I think exposing people to different cultures and different ways of doing things is one way we can combat that.”

It’s also good for his own mental health. “Traveling the world just kind of rights things for me and puts them into perspective,” he says. “And for that, I’m thankful.”

---

Best of the World with Antoni Porowski is executive-produced by host Antoni Porowski along with Nic Patten and Ton Currie for Twofour, and Betsy Forhan and Yari Lorenzo for National Georgraphic. The series is a production of Twofor, part of ITV Studios.

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, issue #8, 2026, under the title "A Feast for the Eyes."