Padma Lakshmi Is Stepping Into Her Power and It Is 'Exhilarating'

On this episode

In our seventh episode, executive features editor Kat Kinsman gets personal with Padma Lakshmi. The author and TV personality had a stunning 19-season run as a host, judge, and executive producer on Top Chef; has written multiple bestselling cookbooks and a memoir; and won both James Beard Awards and Emmys. Just days after this recording, Lakshmi announced that she is leaving the show and will be diving full force into Taste The Nation – a series that she created for Hulu, focusing on the food culture of immigrant groups from across the United States. In this intimate conversation, Lakshmi opens up about her experience as an immigrant to America, the fear and bravery in calling herself a writer, the onesies she gives to guests, identifying as a dork, and how she's found purpose in using her hard-won platform to amplify marginalized voices.

Meet our guest

Padma Lakshmi is the Emmy Award and James Beard Award-winning creator and host of Taste the Nation; former host and executive producer of Top Chef; and author of the cookbooks Easy Exotic; Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet; andThe Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs: An Essential Guide to the Flavors of the World, as well as a memoir, Love, Loss, and What We Ate, and the children's book Tomatoes for Neela. She also edited The Best American Travel Writing 2021. Lakshmi was named on Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential List in 2023 and was featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. In 2009, she co-founded the Endometriosis Foundation of America and she has served as United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador since 2019.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine's podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Advice from the episode

Accepting the title

The only thing I could have imagined was being a writer. When you strip away all the things that I have done or want to do, if you ask me for one word, I would say: writer. ... I had a syndicated column in The New York Times for some time, and I also had a style column in Harper's Bazaar, and it was still hard for me to call myself a writer. Writers were my ex-husband and writers were Susan Sontag, you know? I'm cursed with what I think is good taste in books, and so to call myself the same thing that we call them felt sacrilegious in a way.

A spoonful of honey

We will be better the more clear-eyed we are about our history in this country. I know that there are a lot of people, especially politicians in the South, who are banning books and are afraid of African American studies or learning about the different tribes of Native Americans that have lived in our country for thousands of years — 12,000 years before anybody else got here. Any time you look back in history, there are going to be difficult things, and I do think that Germany has done a better job of reckoning with its very dark history than we have. Everybody would be better if they did that. What I'm trying to do with Taste the Nation is give you that history, but also give you a spoonful of honey and say, "Isn't this food delicious? And aren't these people interesting?" 'Cause they are, and it is.

Rage against the machine

I think we don't talk about female rage enough, so I could talk about it all day long. I think it comes from having the experience and time to observe lots of things in our culture, and also live in my skin in this culture. I have this immense need to express those things that I think and you can call that being motivated or propelled by rage... I am somebody who wants to correct something, and that may be because I have so little control over some very traumatic things that happened to me early in my life. For so long, I didn't understand why other people weren't let in the room, or why different people weren't on TV. Taste the Nation is a product of that frustration and it's not anger; it's more, "Let me tell you something you need to know,” because it's important and it's interesting and it's going to better you.

Picture this

When I was growing up, I had a blonde doll with blue eyes, even in India, which is a strange thing. And I had books with only white children in them. A lot of times when I would take Krishna to the playground, people would either know who I was 'cause they had seen me on Top Chef, or they thought I was the Guatemalan nanny, one of the two. Because my daughter presents as white, that often bothered her, too, when she was little and she just didn't understand it. And so, I wanted to write a book — Tomatoes for Neela — for children who had different backgrounds. I wanted to see that co-mingling of cultures.

Take the next step

All of the things that I've managed to do have been a surprise. I wish I could tell you there was some grand plan, but there really wasn't. I just kind of floated through life and took every opportunity that I could that presented itself. That's something I also tell young people, just push against the open door. You never know.

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

Each week, you'll hear from icons and innovators like Guy Fieri, Padma Lakshmi, David Chang, Mashama Bailey, Enrique Olvera, Maneet Chauhan, Shota Nakajima, Antoni Porowski, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what's on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that'll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, TuneIn.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.