There is no bird in France as highly regarded as the Bresse chicken. Unique to the region in Burgundy with which it shares its name, the breed is the most delicious and expensive poultry in the country—revered for its marbled meat and combination of stark white feathers, bright red comb, and slate blue feet that together resemble the colors of the French flag. To see poulet de Bresse on a menu here is as natural as seeing Dijon mustard or a bottle of Pinot Noir.
I’m being told this by Eva Longoria, who has paused midway through filming a scene for her CNN travel show, Searching for France, which airs April 12, to enthusiastically explain a detailed illustration of said chicken. We’re standing inside the kitchen of Michelin-starred Clos du Cèdre in Beaune, a charming medieval town considered to be the wine capital of Burgundy, which will be Longoria’s home base for the next few days. So far, the actor tells me, she’s ordered it both nights for dinner. “I continue to be surprised by how regional French cuisine can be,” she says. “Wherever I go, I’m asking: Where did this dish come from? How was it born?”
Culinary origin stories—the ways ingredients and their histories can shape or mirror a culture—are the connective tissue that holds Longoria’s show together, which is now in its third season. Prior to France, the actor traveled to Mexico, where her family is from, and then to Spain, to trace her own colonial heritage. In a space crowded with travel shows hosted by celebrities (Zac Efron, Conan O’Brien, and Eugene Levy, to name just three), Longoria proved herself to be an enthusiastic and curious traveler onscreen, biting into sugar-coated conchas with gusto in Mexico City and indulgently guzzling down Catalan prawns in Barcelona.
It was those personal connections to Mexico and Spain that made her an obvious choice for CNN as the network sought to capitalize on the success of Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy. And while Longoria remains open-minded about where she may travel to in the future, she says France was an obvious next step for season three, having fallen hard for it after marrying her now ex-husband, the French American basketball player Tony Parker. “I got to explore France through French people, which is really a beautiful experience because they love their country so much,” she says. It also left her with an insatiable hunger to go more places and see more things after noticing “how well-traveled Europeans were” in contrast to what she describes as her own relatively sheltered upbringing in Texas. “When we divorced, I stayed in love with the country,” she says. “I have strong ties here. It feels like a second home.”
