Review: “No Taste Like Home” Brings A Delicious Sense of Place to National Geographic
What happens when you mix Hulu’s Taste the Nation, PBS’s Finding Your Roots, and a dash of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations? You get National Geographic’s new docuseries No Taste Like Home. Hosted by Antoni Porowski on Queer Eye fame, the series follows celebrities pairing up with Porowski to locate their family’s history through the beauty of food.
As each duo works to dive deeper into the cultural history, more and more delicious recipes come to the forefront, telling their own stories through their ingredients. It’s a simple change to the “who really are you?" genre of non-fiction programming that has become popular this millennium. We are desperate, as a culture, to know everything we can about celebrities, so when we are being presented with new information alongside them, we feel as if we are on an even playing field.
No Taste Like Home takes the concept and turns it into a beautiful look at how few things are as important to a culture surviving as its food. In the Henry Golding episode, a large part of his Iban heritage (an indigenous group native to Borneo) has survived due to the recipes. Bamboo shoots, torched ginger, and other staples are allowing the people to survive, even if their history isn’t written down in tomes.
The lush cinematography of these locations adds a further patience and compassion the series has to highlighting cultures, places, and people. During such a tumultuous time, it’s nice to feel the warmth of learning about others and how these cultures and lands have survived for hundreds of years through their own calibrated tenacity.
Where No Taste Like Home fails to fire all burners, so to speak, is the hosting of Antoni Porowski. His narration that is heard frequently throughout the series is very base level, adding obvious context where it’s not necessary. In person, he tends to take a back seat to some remarkable familial interactions. However when he does chime in, the queries remain second rate, as if to add noise more than an actual question to ponder.
While watching, I yearned for the series to take on the format of my beloved The Getaway on the now shuttered Esquire Network. The series had celebrities travel to their favorite destinations across the globe, showcasing their preferred haunts and secret hideaways. With each episode, the respective celebrity took over hosting duties, becoming the sole narrator and leader for the viewer. In the case of this series, I understand the need to have a comforting figure to tag along for emotional support. I just wish the figure could’ve been someone close to each celebrity.
Even with Porowski’s misplaced presence, the series has so much to offer. The beauty of food mixed with the intense connection to culture allows for a fresh take on travel and ancestry. While there certainly is No Taste Like Home, it’s a privilege to sample these.
No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski premieres February 23rd on National Geographic.