πΊπΈ United States Β· Indian cuisine Β· b. 1970
Cookbook author, television host and producer who used food to redefine American storytelling about immigrant cuisines.
Padma Lakshmi is an Indian-American author, food writer, model, actor and television producer who became one of the most recognisable food personalities in the United States during her seventeen-year tenure as host of Bravo's Top Chef. Born in Chennai (then Madras) in 1970 and raised between India and the United States after her mother emigrated to New York to work as a nurse, Lakshmi has spent her career bridging the food cultures of the two countries she calls home.
Her first cookbook, Easy Exotic, was published in 1999 and won the Best First Book award at the Versailles World Cookbook Fair β making her the first American woman to win the prize. Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet followed in 2007, and in 2016 she released The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs, a reference text of more than 250 entries that took her seven years to compile. Her 2016 memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate became a New York Times bestseller and drew critical attention for its candid account of her childhood between cultures, her marriage to and divorce from Salman Rushdie, and her experience of endometriosis.
From 2006 to 2023 she hosted seventeen seasons of Top Chef, the longest-running cooking competition on American cable television and a four-time winner of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Competition Program. In 2020 she created, executive-produced and hosted Taste the Nation on Hulu, a James Beard Award-winning documentary series exploring immigrant and indigenous foodways across the United States. She is also a co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America and an outspoken advocate on reproductive health, immigration and women's representation in food media.
Food as autobiography and politics. Lakshmi argues that what is on the American plate has always been the most honest account of who America is β and that food television has a responsibility to interrogate that story rather than flatten it. She rejects the framing of immigrant cuisines as 'ethnic' or 'exotic' and has used Taste the Nation specifically to argue that there is no American cuisine separable from the cuisines of the people who arrived to make it.
These recipes from our database reflect the indian cooking tradition that Padma works in. They are not direct reproductions of Padma's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
βFood is the gateway to so many other things β culture, history, politics, identity. If you can get someone to share a meal with you, you can get them to share a worldview.β
β NPR interview, 2020
βThere is no American food that isn't immigrant food.β
β Taste the Nation, episode 1 (2020)
Discovered as a model in Madrid while studying abroad; signs with Ford Models and works internationally for the next decade.
Publishes first cookbook, Easy Exotic; wins Best First Book at the Versailles World Cookbook Fair.
Hosts the Food Network's Padma's Passport β her first U.S. cooking show.
Replaces Katie Lee as host of Bravo's Top Chef starting with Season 2.
Co-founds the Endometriosis Foundation of America with Dr. Tamer Seckin.
Releases memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate and reference work The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs.
Launches Taste the Nation on Hulu as creator, executive producer and host.
Wins the James Beard Award for Best Hosted Series for Taste the Nation.
Departs Top Chef after seventeen seasons as host.
No. Lakshmi has always identified as a home cook, food writer and host rather than a professionally trained chef. She has been clear in interviews that her role on Top Chef was as a knowledgeable eater and judge, and she credits her late mother and her grandmother in Chennai for her practical cooking education.
Lakshmi announced her departure in June 2023 after seventeen seasons, saying she wanted to focus on Taste the Nation, her writing and her advocacy work on endometriosis and reproductive health. She was replaced as host by Kristen Kish, the Season 10 winner of Top Chef.
Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi is a Hulu documentary series, premiered in 2020, in which Lakshmi visits communities across the United States β including Gullah Geechee fishermen, Persian-American cooks in Los Angeles, the Apache of Arizona, Thai immigrants in Las Vegas β to explore how those communities have shaped American cuisine. It won the James Beard Award for Best Hosted Series in 2022.
Published in 2016 and seven years in the writing, the book documents more than 250 spices, herbs, salts and aromatics β including their botany, history, regional usage, buying notes and storage β and is the only single-volume reference of its kind by a working food writer rather than an academic.
Yes. Lakshmi was married to the novelist Salman Rushdie from 2004 to 2007. She has written candidly about the relationship in her 2016 memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate.
Read more on Wikipedia