Padma Lakshmi has spent her career translating flavor, not only between cuisines but between cultures. Long before words like representation or visibility entered the mainstream, she was the rare brown woman at the helm of an American food show, calmly introducing viewers to ingredients they could not yet pronounce. She explained turmeric before it was bottled as wellness, made curry feel specific rather than monolithic, and showed America that spice was something to embrace, not fear.
Over the decades, Lakshmi has perfected the art of existing in plurality. From her earliest days as India’s first supermodel to her seventeen-year tenure as host of Top Chef, from her deeply researched series Taste the Nation to her new book, Padma’s All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste the Nation and Beyond, Lakshmi has built a career around storytelling. The medium—runway, page, or plate—has never mattered as much as the message: that food is memory, migration, and identity woven together.
In conversation and on the page, she’s unequivocal about her identity: she is a writer first. “I’ve been lucky to make a living out of what naturally interests me,” she says. “But at the deepest part of who I am, I consider myself a writer.”
Padma’s All American, shaped by seven years of reporting for Taste the Nation, reads like a cultural atlas, mapping immigrant and Indigenous kitchens across the country. She visits refugee-run Thai kitchens in Las Vegas, Indigenous markets in the Arizona desert, and immigrant-owned eateries tucked along the country’s backroads. Each story becomes a portrait of resilience and belonging, a reflection of how people build home through food.
Lakshmi writes not as an observer but as someone reclaiming the word “American” for herself and for the communities too often left off the menu. She writes about an Afghan kabuli pulao taught to her in a friend’s kitchen and a mango sticky rice that carries the story of home across oceans.
There are lentil broths and tamarind stews that trace the South Indian diaspora; tagine-inspired chicken bright with lemon and apricots; fesenjan braised in pomegranate and walnuts; and pernil, Puerto Rican roast pork with crackling skin.
Lakshmi calls these “third-culture recipes,” faithful to their origins yet adapted for American kitchens. The book is less about fusion than inclusion. “I wanted to claim that this, too, is American.”
As we settled into conversation, Lakshmi spoke about the stories behind Padma’s All American, the evolution of her voice, and how food remains her most powerful way of understanding the world.
Q. You’ve built such a multifaceted life—a model, writer, host, activist, mother. When you look back now, what thread ties all of those identities together?
Padma Lakshmi: I’m the thread that ties it all together. I’ve changed careers a couple of times, from model to writer and performer to producer—but at the deepest part of who I am, I consider myself a writer first.
Even the other things that I do, whether it’s publishing a cookbook, putting out Padma’s All American, or creating a new TV show, all of that creativity stems from my work as a writer. Everything else really comes out of that.
My grandfather really instilled the love of books in me. He was one of the most well-read people I know. That had a big influence on me early on. Now my greatest luxury is having time—a few hours of block time in succession to read—which is a real love for me.
Q. You grew up between Chennai and New York, and you’ve often spoken about belonging everywhere and nowhere. Does that show up in Padma’s All American?
Lakshmi: Yes, it does. In finding all these communities while traveling all over the country, I found myself in the faces of the people I interviewed for Taste the Nation as well as for this book. The book is really about them, but it’s also about my experience of them.
It’s a very tenuous time in America, but doing this book, as well as the show before it, gave me hope. It showed me the beauty of our country and its diversity, and how that is such a strength and not a deficit in our system.
Q. What made now the right time to write it? How have conversations about immigrant identity and food representation changed since Easy Exotic back in 1999?
Lakshmi: I’ve been working on it for seven years. I couldn’t have predicted that there would be all these ICE raids and the terrible news around immigration. I’m sorry that this is the time the book is coming out in, but perhaps it’s somewhat of a small antidote to all of that.
When I think about that first book, I kind of cringe at the title. But what I was trying to do there isn’t different from what I’m doing now, twenty-five years later. I was trying to translate the world’s flavors for the average reader and entice people to try new foods and work with ingredients they might not have grown up with.
The mission of that first book is very tied to this one. With Padma’s All American, I want to pique people’s curiosity. That’s the through line across my work.
Q. You’ve broken so many barriers for South Asian women in media. Was there a moment when you first felt truly seen?
Lakshmi: When I first got an Emmy nomination for Top Chef I felt seen, because for so long as an actor I struggled even to get auditions that I was right for. They would always say, “We don’t want to cast an ethnic person for this.” But everybody’s ethnic from somewhere.
That felt like the gold block I could not overcome. So when I was accepted by the Television Academy for my work on Top Chef, it meant a lot—it meant that my ability had nothing to do with the way I looked. I didn’t want to be known as the best Indian anything; I just wanted to be good at my craft and have all kinds of people watch me. I wanted to be judged on the basis of my work rather than my appearance.
Q. You’ve said that food is how we tell stories. When you think about the story of your own life, what dish best describes the chapter you’re in right now?
Lakshmi: There’s a beautiful Afghan dish called Kabuli Pulao. It was taught to me by a wonderful woman named Shamim Popal. That recipe is where I’m at now. It’s delicious, and it could easily be a recipe that Indians or Pakistanis or Persians or people from the Middle East make. It’s absolutely delicious with carrots, raisins, and lamb.
Q. You’ve often said your daughter Krishna is your favorite dinner companion. What is she teaching you these days about food or joy?
Lakshmi: She’s teaching me not to take myself so seriously and to enjoy everything. She’s just like, “Okay, Mom, not every subject needs a TED Talk. We can just enjoy this food without knowing about how the Habsburgs conquered someplace or the history of paprika.”
Q. How did the five years of Taste the Nation reporting influence the voice and scope of this book?
Lakshmi: Actually, the idea was for a cookbook first rather than a show. It was always going to be a cookbook. I worked on the proposal for several months, and once I had done all the research, I was talking about it with my producing partner, who was going to make a show with me. I showed it to him, and he said, “This should be our show—we should blend the two together.”
Because food is a great entry point to talk about all these more serious issues. Taste the Nation was always going to be a political show; it just used food as its lens.
Q. Were there communities or stories that surprised you while translating Taste the Nation into print form?
Lakshmi: I was surprised when I went to the desert in the San Carlos Reservation. If you had left me there, I would have surely starved in the course of two days. I realized there was so much bounty in what looks like a barren desert. We even ate a cactus from there. That was a wonderful surprise.
Q. How do you personally define “All American” today? How did you decide which communities and recipes to include in Padma’s All American?
Lakshmi: Even seven years ago, before the book existed, I wanted to call it All American because this notion of who gets to call themselves a “real American” has always interested me. I would hear people say, “Oh no, we want to cast someone American for this,” and I would think, well, I’ve lived my whole life here, gone to school here, paid taxes here—how am I any less American?
I wanted to claim that. I wanted to say: this, too, is American. I always want my writing to be very deep and personal, or at least meaningful. This is not a “one, two, three easy chicken dinners” kind of cookbook. It’s researched, it’s scholarly, and it’s also philosophical and based on my point of view.
It’s a very editorialized book, the kind of work I’m interested in. If you just want the easiest recipe for kabuli pulao or chickpea curry or whatever, you can find that online. But if you’re looking for my point of view—and why this dish matters beyond the fact that it’s delicious—then you’ll be interested in All American.
Q. The book isn’t about fusion but inclusion. How does that idea connect to what’s happening politically right now around immigration and identity?
Lakshmi: I’m just hoping that people who might not care about these issues in a political sense will be drawn in through curiosity about food. Maybe they’ll start with the recipes, but hopefully those dishes will also make them curious about the communities behind them.
We all eat Thai food all the time, takeout, mostly. When I cook Thai food, I’m reminded that the women who taught me how to make Thai food here came as war brides. If you start cooking those recipes at home, you learn a little bit about that history, about those lives. Curiosity about flavor can lead to empathy for people.
Q. You’ve also pushed against the idea that immigrant food needs to be “reimagined” or “elevated.” How do you see the language of food media evolving—or not evolving—since you started?
Lakshmi: I think it’s evolving a lot. You’re seeing very high-end restaurants now that serve Korean food, or Indian food, or Mexican food, and that’s wonderful. It’s about time. For a long time, people weren’t willing to pay fine-dining prices for what they saw as “ethnic food.”
But it’s never about what you do; it’s about how you do it. It’s the tablecloth, the quality of the ingredients, the attention to detail, the balance of flavors. Excellence exists across geographical and cultural lines, and it’s finally being recognized that way.
Q. After all these years, what does home cooking mean to you—when home spans continents and histories?
Lakshmi: Home cooking has less to do with a specific culture and more to do with what you grew up eating at your mother’s table or your grandmother’s stove. It’s about the people, not the place.
My mother cooked enchiladas and spaghetti, those aren’t traditional Indian foods, but they feel like home to me. Maybe she added some masala here and there, but that’s what made them ours. Home isn’t a geographical place to me. Home is where the people you love reside, even if only in memory.
Q. What do you hope a young South Asian girl in America—seeing you and reading you—understands about her own possibility?
Lakshmi: What means the most to me is when young women—not just South Asian, but women of color in general—come up to me. Whether they’re Mexican, Chinese, Black, or anything else, they’ll say, “I love watching you. I love what you wear. I love how you talk about your food.”
I didn’t have that growing up. I didn’t meet Madhur Jaffrey until I was thirty. She became such a big influence, not only because she was a great writer and recipe developer, but because she was also a great actor and performer. She showed me what was possible.
Q. You’ve talked about beauty, body, and identity so candidly over the years. How has your relationship with your body changed now that you’re authoring the narrative instead of being photographed for it?
Lakshmi: My relationship with my body has gotten a lot deeper and more positive over the years. One reason is that I don’t make a living based on what I look like anymore. I’ve transcended that in my own career.
I’m able to create my own projects now, and I don’t measure my worth by my appearance, which I think is one of the biggest struggles for women in our society. We’re always judged by how we look, and the standards for women on television are very different from those for men.
I have to be just as smart, just as nimble, just as hardworking as my male peers—but I also have to do it in high heels and after two hours of hair and makeup. It’s really irritating, but I’m pragmatic. Television is a visual medium.
I need to get my shows greenlit, and if that means I have to look a certain way for the project to get a “yes,” then fine. I understand that hair and makeup or high heels might be a means to an end, but they’re no longer the end in themselves.
If wearing those heels helps people listen to the story I’m telling, so be it.
Q. If you could invite anyone from your past or present to your dream dinner table, who would get a seat? And what would you serve them?
Lakshmi: Dorothy Parker, Muhammad Ali, my grandparents who are no longer with us, and my daughter. I’d cook Kabuli Pulao for them.
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Padma’s All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste the Nation and Beyond will be published by Knopf on November 4, 2025. Padma Lakshmi appears at Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures on November 10, 2025.
