NEW YORK – Making bread requires flour, water, salt, and typically a leavening agent such as yeast. To explore the world of bread, CNN has recruited a special host — Tony Shalhoub.
This fall, Broadway and “Monk” actor Tony Shalhoub steps into the bustling realm of celebrity travel presenters with “Breaking Bread.” The show follows him around the world as he immerses himself in various cultures and cuisines through the lens of bread.
“It revolves around bread, yet bread acts more like a symbol, a medium, to highlight and showcase history, culture, and people, and to discover their actions and motivations,” he explains.
The series kicks off on Sunday night, with Shalhoub savoring baguettes and bouillabaisse in Marseille, France, and enjoying airy milk bread and red bean paste buns in Tokyo.
‘Delicious bread’
The premiere episode takes place in Shalhoub’s present city, New York, where he indulges in traditional pumpernickel and rye breads, alongside Irish soda bread scones. He visits Chinatown for fried dough and Brooklyn’s Little Caribbean for black cake and currant rolls.
“I’m amazed you convinced anyone to produce this show. We just get to enjoy delightful bread,” quips guest Lin-Manuel Miranda to Shalhoub as he bites into an everything bagel topped with cream cheese and jam.
Shalhoub finds himself in Brazil in the second episode, reveling in the influences Lebanese immigrants like him have given to São Paulo’s food scene: Flatbreads, za’atar, pistachios and kibbeh. He visits a cassava farm, learns about fermentation and Afro-Brazilian heritage in things like a deep fried bread ball made from black eye pea flour.
It may be a show about different breads, but Shalhoub and his team are happy to try various local foods and drinks. “This used to be a show about bread,” he jokes onscreen after pounding a caipirinha, the Brazilian cocktail. (“Because of the schedule, there’s no shortage of day drinking,” he notes in the interview.)
Crowded field
Shalhoub is part of a crowded field of celeb travel hosts, which includes Rainn Wilson, Eugene Levy, Stanley Tucci,Orlando Bloom, Zac Efron, José Andrés, Chris Hemsworth, Will Smith, Eva Longoria and Ewan McGregor.
They are all following in the wake of the late Anthony Bourdain, whose “Parts Unknown” series on CNN was part travelogue, part history lesson and part love letter to food.
Amy Entelis, executive vice president for talent, CNN Originals and creative development for CNN Worldwide, worked on Bourdain’s show and greenlit Shalhoub’s.
“No one we work with tries to be Tony Bourdain and nobody thinks they’re going to be,” she says. “We try to work with people to go on that mission, but to make it theirs.”
Shalhoub collected three Emmy Awards for his work as obsessive-compulsive private detective Adrian Monk over eight seasons. After the show ended in 2009, Shalhoub went on to earn three Tony Award nominations, winning in 2018 for “The Band’s Visit” and starred in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” winning another Emmy.
“I don’t want the show to be about me. I feel like I’m acting more as a tour guide, so to speak. I want it to be more about the other people — the people that I meet, the people I interview, the new places that I get to visit,” Shalhoub says.
“I don’t know that TV audiences need to see that much more of me after all these years. I certainly don’t want to see that much of me.”
Bringing the family
“Breaking Bread” is a travel and food show, but it’s also a family affair, with Shalhoub’s oldest child, Josie, joining him in Marseille as they trace his father’s 1920 journey through the city. His wife, Brooke Adams, and daughter Sophie join him in Iceland, while his siblings and nephews feature in a Wisconsin-based episode.
“Bread to me is tied to memory, tied to our childhood, tied to our parents and our grandparents and all their contemporaries,” he says. “We’re drawing from the past, but it’s also something that we want to pass down to my grandchildren and forward and onward.”
Entelis says Shalhoub’s show is endearing in large part because he’s never done something like this, coming off as a fish-out-of-water who reveals an open heart wherever he goes.
“You get somebody who’s really fresh and new to this kind of work but comes at it with a sort of deep love and passion for food and people and travel,” she says. “This is the Tony behind the actor and I feel we’re really getting a good understanding of that person.”
But there is one moment that may rankle some natives of his current hometown. During the New York episode, Shalhoub is lured across the river to Jersey City, where he is introduced to the “finest pizza in New York.”
The best New York pizza is in New Jersey? “I’m going to be going incognito now for probably the rest of my life,” he jokes.
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