How Eva Longoria Makes a Travel Show

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.” Her interest in and passion for French cuisine and culture is abundantly clear during our morning of filming in the Clos du Cèdre kitchen. Longoria, dressed in a pink cashmere sweater and slouchy cream pants, joins the restaurant's 34-year-old head chef, Jordan Billan, to make escargot quenelle—a rich, snail-stuffed dumpling-like dish—under the glaring lights of a film crew. She slips between English and French with apparent ease. Out of shot, sous-chefs wearing plump white toques work quietly and methodically: Dough is rolled into crisp tartlet shells, chocolate is whisked for desserts, lobster tails are sliced with surgical precision. When the director yells, “Cut!” Longoria darts across the kitchen to gather more gastronomic tidbits and sample leftover morsels. She snaps a tartlet, fresh out of the oven, in half with her hands for us to share. The season is almost wrapped. Memorable moments have included tasting Aquitaine caviar in Bordeaux, making cheese in Alsace, and going on a tempestuous boat ride off the coast of Brittany with chef Alain DuCasse. “It was pouring rain, freezing cold, and everybody was getting seasick,” Longoria recounts. “But then this blue lobster comes out, and it's the most beautiful blue I've ever seen. Getting that shot was pure celebration.” Longoria feels like herself in France, something I witness firsthand at Woodland House, a cooking school and bucolic family residence 30 minutes south of Beaune. She is there to learn how to prepare lapin à la moutarde, or rabbit braised in mustard sauce, under the tutelage of mother-daughter owners and American expats Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini. To my surprise, it's a dish that resonates with Longoria deeply: “I grew up eating rabbit and frog legs on our ranch in Texas. My dad never let us eat fast food. We [raised] everything we ate, even the turkey for Thanksgiving,” she says, shortly before tossing a freshly stripped rabbit carcass into a Le Creuset. “I've always had a very strong relationship with eating simply and cooking simply. And so to be in France and find that parallel with this country is so fascinating to me.” It's a kind of authenticity that helps forge a potentially great travel host, a recipe that CNN is still trying to define. “We got extremely lucky that Anthony Bourdain was the first person we partnered with,” says Amy Entelis, CNN Worldwide's executive vice president for content and talent development, who produced almost 100 episodes with the late Parts Unknown host. “Viewers want knowledge. They want depth. They want passion. And they want to learn something.” Entelis is also aware that, as the network continues to expand its travel programming, audiences in 2026 are looking for escapism. “We're going to places that we know people have an affection for,” she says. On the final day of shooting, I meet up with Longoria and the crew at Château d'Entre-Deux-Monts, a family-owned 17th-century estate and truffle producer near Dijon. She's here to try her hand at truffle hunting for the first time—an experience, like so many in the show, intended to chart the trajectory of a single delicacy from the ground to the kitchen to the plate. After a lengthy period spent stomping around in the mud, Cedric, the château's soft-spoken truffle hunter, and his exuberant dog, Sultan, sound the alarm that the prized fungus has been found. It resembles a potato and smells potently of soil—nothing like the moneyed scent of the shaved slivers either of us has encountered before. Longoria happily plops it into a woven basket to bring back to the château kitchen. “On y va!” she shouts back to the crew. “Let's go taste it!” In Burgundy with Eva Stay: Boutique hotel Hostellerie Cèdre & Spa Beaune, with a small Nuxe spa and an award-winning gastronomy program, is a 10-minute walk from the center of Beaune and Hospices de Beaune, a 15th-century former almshouse that was pivotal in Burgundy's wine production. Eat: Michelin-starred Clos du Cèdre inside the hotel has worked closely with local producers and ingredients to create classic French dishes such as poached Bresse chicken with truffles. At Château d'Entre-Deux-Monts, visitors can tour the 17th-century estate before participating in a truffle hunt with the property's producer. Nearby Château du Clos de Vougeot, which has been making wine since the start of the 11th century, hosts guided tours and wine tastings. Shop: Stock up on immaculate French kitchenware, hard-to-find Pinot Noirs, and Dijon peppercorns at The Cook's Atelier, Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini's charming shop and cooking school that offers an immersive five-day Seasonal Burgundy Masterclass, concluding at Woodland House. This article appeared in the April 2026 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.