Eddie Huang hesitates before he makes the proclamation and, coming from the proudly American chef, it’s a big one.

Toronto’s food scene is even “more interesting and diverse” than Los Angeles and New York, he says in an interview with the Star.

“I’m going to be flamed just saying that,” says the host of Viceland’s Huang’s WorldHuang’s World. “I really feel Toronto exceeded all expectations. The level of diversity is insane. America is very proud of the melting pot. But in Canada you can be Canadian but still be who you are.”

The multi-talented Huang is the owner of popular Taiwanese restaurants named BaoHaus in both New York and Los Angeles, where he is based. He’s also a chef, writer, fashion designer, and his book provided the inspiration for the ABC television series Fresh Off the Boat.

(That little Eddie in the ABC sitcom who likes hip hop? That’s supposed to be Huang.)

In the second season of Huang’s World, Eddie checks out Toronto as well as Washington, D.C., Japan, Hawaii, New York and Peru. The show airs Tuesdays on Rogers’ Viceland, with the Toronto episode available online to viewers who already have access to that channel.

The travelogue isn’t about food necessarily, but food invariably provides Huang a lens to examine culture and identity in the series.

“I didn’t come into the game saying I want to make a travel show or a food show. The network wanted to do a travel and food show. They could have called it Horse and Hound, but I would still have looked at issues of race and culture,” he says.

The formula for Huang’s World is familiar to anyone who has seen CNN’s Parts Unknown with host Anthony Bourdain, though the Vice incarnation has a grittier esthetic in keeping with the millennial target audience and the 35-year-old Huang’s bad-boy persona.

Where it does suffer in the inevitable comparisons to Parts Unknown is the cinematography. CNN’s camera guys capture images unparalleled for a food show, making places like Brooklyn look lush and exotic. Perhaps the Vice show is more honest: it doesn’t exoticize the locale.

The attraction here is Huang, anyhow. While Bourdain’s show has the benefit of news channel CNN’s veteran documentary team to help with production, Huang’s approach is fast, loose and guerrilla-style. The fact that he is a fish out of water is an advantage as he moves into communities and neighbourhoods that are off the radar for most.

“I really try to go out of my way to go to places where people really eat, that really represents the community,” says Huang. “That’s where the culture resides.”

He first visited Toronto on an invitation from fellow Vice network star and chef Matty Matheson. Looking to fill a prescription for a scratchy throat, Huang found himself at a food court in Mississauga.

“I walked around and there was Jamaican food, there was Indian food and I thought this is wild. This is like a night market right beside Walmart. Everyone had great accents and I thought this is paradigm-shifting. I have to come back here.”

On his return, Huang deliberately targets local eateries. Don’t expect a visit to the usual suspects of top diners such as Buca, Alo or Scaramouche.

In Scarborough, Huang is so pleased with the lobster at Fishman Lobster Clubhouse Restaurant that he promptly takes off his shirt to show his pleasure, as stunned patrons look on.

“It was hands down the best Cantonese seafood spot I’ve been to,” says Huang.

That’s high praise coming from the picky Chinese-American chef. “There are places with more refined cooking but, for a family-style restaurant, it’s the best.”

He also checks out George’s Tastee Foods in Markham for the Jamaican-style patties. And when he does visit an upscale establishment such as Harbour Sixty Steakhouse, it is really to talk to the predominantly Sri Lankan staff (although he does have a pretty awesome porterhouse).

Huang also does some “Canadian stuff” including playing hockey, visiting the set of Degrassi and, oddly, throwing axes with journalist Jeffrey Dvorkin.

The visit, he says, made him want to make a return trip.

“It’s just an incredible city and it appreciates the fact that everyone is dynamic regardless of race.”

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Restaurateur bristles at racial talk

Eddie Huang isn’t happy with me.

It seems the host of Huang’s World on Viceland is tired of answering questions about race. Not to mention ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, the show based on his biography about growing up Asian-American.

“I find it mildly disrespectful that you’re asking me to speak for all of Asian America. I’m a whole human being, not a bag of yellow skin,” he says in an interview.

He’s not alone. I was in Los Angeles when Black-ish creator Kenya Barris seemed to have a breakdown when asked a question about diversity at the Television Critics Association tour.

“I am constantly having to talk about diversity,” says Barris. “It’s ridiculous.”

(Still, it’s probably fair to say if you end up calling your series Black-ish or Fresh off the Boat, be prepared to get some questions on diversity.)

Huang has been outspoken on his views on race in the past, in eloquent articles in New York Magazine, and more recently an op-ed piece in the New York Times talking about the emasculization of the Asian male in media. His Vice series Huang’s World also looks at identity politics.

But this time around, the combative host is having none of it. There were no restrictions on the scope of the interview, but one question seems to set him off. It’s asking his opinion on the controversial equal pay dispute that saw Hawaii Five-0 stars Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park leave the series.

The two stars reportedly left the long-running show because they were not paid the same as their fellow white cast members.

“I’m not signing up for a charity on how much Asians are being paid in Hollywood,” says Huang. “It’s very interesting who the Asian coalition and Asian organizations support in Hollywood. They weren’t supporting me when I was fighting for Fresh Off the Boat on the content.”

Fresh Off the Boat, it seems, is still a sore point with Huang. It was the first American sitcom featuring Asian leads since Margaret Cho’s All American Girl two decades earlier. But when I first interviewed Huang in Los Angeles before the first season of the show premiered, he heavily criticized the series for being inauthentic: Viewers, he said, “don’t want Panda Express and Moo Goo Gai Pan.”

Ties with producers of the show have also been strained. In Season 1, Huang was the voice-over narrator. But he didn’t return for a second season.

And he says he doesn’t watch the series, which has been renewed for a fourth season.

“I watched the pilot and the next two episodes and I never watched again,” says Huang. “I watched part of the episode where they went back to Taiwan because I love the Grand Hotel location, but I lasted five minutes with it. I can’t watch that show.”