@ New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival – America’s best music/food festival
Mark DeCarlo is an Emmy Award-winning TV host, improv actor/host, screenwriter, and best-selling author. He is known for his quick humor and deep passion for food and travel. He has hosted hit shows like Taste of America, Studs and X Show, voiced the iconic character Hugh Neutron in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and written the popular travel/food book A Fork on the Road. A Fork on the Road is also a podcast he co-hosts with his wife, Yeni Alvarez.
He has also appeared in several hit TV series and movies such as The Rookie, Seinfeld, Family Guy, Lucifer, Malcolm in the Middle, Fifty Shades Darker etc. His upcoming project Pinocchio & the Water of Life is an animated feature reboot co-written with Ryan Rowe.
Mark and I recently chatted about how food and travel have always been close to his heart. He reminisced about his hit travel show Taste of America and how much the media landscape has changed over the years.
Mark loves funny billboards. Always worth pulling off the road for a picture
Q. You grew up in Chicago. Was there a moment early in life when you realized you were meant to be in entertainment and, did you ever imagine that would somehow lead you into the world of travel and food too?
I was always a funny kid, because early on I realized it was a great way to kill the boredom of grade school. Would you rather learn long division or convince the kid next to you to turn his eyelid inside out to gross out the girls? For me, the answer was clear. Then, as a freshman in High School, my best friend’s two older siblings were on stage at Second City in downtown Chicago, so we would sneak in and watch the show. When I learned they were getting paid to goof off at night and just wrote comedy all day, I knew what I wanted to do. That, and a total lack of any other skill set pretty much sealed my fate.
Q. Food has been a big part of your travel stories. What is one of the most memorable food moments you have ever had, it could be taste, the people, or the story behind it?
Growing up in Chicago, I would help my Italian grandmother hand make ravioli. I was the forker. She would make the dough, fold it over and cut it, then I would fork all the little pillows closed.
All the juicy conversations ALWAYS happen in the kitchen. Also, food is the shorthand for civilization. People go to where they can eat. That’s why Rome is crowded, and the Sahara is not.
Food and recipes tell the story of a place, of a culture. Key Lime pie was invented in Key West because it is made of the ingredients that they had in a place without refrigeration: eggs, limes and condensed milk from cans delivered by ship. Necessity is the mother of Invention.
Q. Back in the early 2000s, you traveled across the US to film Taste of America and years later, your travels expanded beyond the US. How has all international travel changed you and how have your taste buds changed after all your travels?
My taste buds have always been pretty good. There is great food right here in America – New Orleans, Chicago, Southwest, Miami, NYC … every region has the things they do best, usually because back in the day before refrigeration, the ingredients were plentiful and affordable. That is also why the food in Europe, specifically Italy is so uniformly fantastic.
Most everything you eat was picked THAT DAY or the day before. There is no massive food infrastructure- it’s mostly local farm to table, and the owners of restaurants take personal pride and interest in where they get their produce, their dough, they make their own wine. It’s a more personally curated culture and you can taste it.
Whenever we get back to America, the food tastes like cardboard for weeks. We also eat A LOT while we are gone, but don’t gain weight because of all the walking and the total lack of preservatives in the food. There is no GMO or chemicals because they are not transporting tomatoes 2000 miles to a buyer – it is more like 2 kilometers. And you can taste it. In Italy, a simple tomato and cheese is a meal.
Q. When you are filming travel and food shows, how do you decide which stories to tell in a new place?
I am always drawn to the people behind the place. If there is a coffee shop in Charlotte that everyone loves, it is as much of the WHO runs it as it is the coffee itself.
Eating out is an experience – and the owners that understand that, that they are inviting people into their space, and take care of them in that way, nurture a culture that attracts recurring visits. Family businesses, triumph over struggle, all the stories in my book “A Fork on the Road: 400 Cities, 1 stomach” revolve are people, because characters are funny and interesting. You just have to know how to talk to them to get them to open up and be themselves in front of cameras.
Luckily, I am able to do that with pretty much anyone. In Miami, for the pilot of Taste of America, I spent the day with 3 Cuban chefs who had escaped Castro’s repressive regime to Miami and opened a Cuban restaurant.
You can’t throw a stick in Miami without hitting a Cuban joint, but these guys – the ‘3 guys from Miami’ – have a passion for people and brought all their family recipes with them.
After making tamales from scratch with them all day, we were relaxing in the hot tub, smoking a cigar and I learned it was one of the guy’s 65th birthday. I asked him if he remembers where he spent his 21st birthday, and he said, “Yeah. In Castro’s Jail.”
Food was his ticket off that island and led him to a life of prosperity here in America. Those are the kinds of stories I love.
Outside the greatest place on Earth – Wrigley Field
Q. What is one overlooked and underrated destination you wish more people knew about — and why?
If I told you, then it would be ruined. Hint: it is a fried chicken PLACE in the 504. And, as you probably know, Chickens live in COOPS.
Q. You are an actor, comedian, TV host and even author, you have been wearing so many different hats. Has all that travel and interaction with different cultures influenced the way you perform or connect with audiences?
Hugely. Every audience is different. The time, place, what is happening in the world that day, all of it influences the state of mind of an audience at the start of a show. You have to be able to feel them – as a group – and then give them the material that they respond to the best.
The first few minutes on stage are a sniffing out process – they came out of their houses to be entertained, and it is my job to deliver that for them. Comedy is the great equalizer, but comedy differs from culture to culture. Stuff that works in Chicago, may not work in Denver.
That is the fun part, the more cultures you are exposed to, and live in, the bigger your toolbox is as an entertainer. Plus, the more interesting your life is. No matter where you live, there are people who live elsewhere who do things differently.
The mistake some people make is to automatically assume THEIR WAY is ALWAYS the best way. Sometimes it is not.
Q. Humor has always been a big part of your work. Why do you think we need more of it these days?
The world is a cruel, unforgiving place. And then we die. those are facts. If we don’t laugh, what do we have?
Laughter is the only sound on planet Earth that is universal – no matter your language, if you think something is funny, you laugh.
Laughter is what happens when you are presented with an idea that clashes with what you THOUGHT was coming next. It is the flash of recognition when the audience and the performer – for an instant – are on the exact same wavelength. That is the jolt that keeps me coming back for more.
Hitting a dinger at Cubs Fantasy camp in Mesa, AZ
Q. The whole media landscape has changed so much since the early 2000s. What has it been like riding that wave—from traditional TV to everything now being so online and on-demand, like the podcast A Fork on the Road Show you are hosting with your wife?
It has changed tremendously!
When I started my Travel Channel show, it was just Bourdain and me doing food stories on the road. His show was from the POV of the food, the chefs. Mine was from the people, the places, and the experiences that centered on food.
Now, with the explosion of the web, and influencers “travel media” is a sexy looking person, sipping an Aperol at an infinity pool. No context, no words, nothing but a carefully curated image designed to sell you something.
But that is a function of how the smart phone has become the center of people’s lives. Personally, I prefer living my life in 3D, not through a screen. I’d rather find a small mom and pop gelato stand than go to the ‘hottest place’ … according to IG.
It always makes me laugh when I see a huge line outside a restaurant or bar one night, then never again. That’s a marketing ploy via social media that attracts uninformed lemmings to “the hottest new thing.”
Some of that is good for research, but there’s still no better way to get to know a new place than to just …. Walk around and talk to strangers. Some of my best conversations of all time have been with strangers… who then became friends.
Jamming in Macon, GA with Music Legend Taj Mahal.
Q. What is your message to our readers—especially those who want to bring media or storytelling into their travels?
If you travel, be a traveler not a tourist. A tourist gets on a bus with 30 other people and follows an itinerary designed by a company to hit all the ‘must see’ places. You get 30 minutes then back on the bus. It’s not authentic and you rarely actually soak up any local culture.
A traveler researches before they arrive, then has a check list but isn’t afraid to go off book if they find a place, person or event that interests them.
The great explorers of history: Magellan, Darwin, Columbus – none of them knew where they were going, they just knew they wanted to go there. Wherever “there” was, to see what it’s all about.
Find your own “there’” and then make videos about it if you want. Or you can just sit, sip a cappuccino and chat with a stranger. For me, that’s why I travel.
All photographs credit: Mark DeCarlo
Great interview with Mark! For fellow travel and food lovers, Vietnam and Sri Lanka are amazing destinations—not just for their flavors but also for easy access. Both countries offer rich culture, unforgettable cuisine, and smooth entry for travelers. Perfect picks for your next trip! 🌏🍜🕌✈️