Padma Lakshmi on Cooking, Culture, and Who Gets to Belong in America (Patreon)

The Taste the Nation host talks with me about American food as an immigrant story—and why curiosity at the table still matters.

Padma Lakshmi came over to my place while she was on tour for her new book, Padma's All-American, a highly personal cross-cultural journey that explores what it means to be American, and what immigrant cultures have brought to the table. It's a book shaped by years of traveling the country and listening closely to the people who cook it. Padma doesn’t really need an introduction. She’s the creator and host of the award-winning Taste the Nation, the former host of Top Chef, and the author of several cookbooks and a children's book.

We talked while making the sesame chutney noodles from her book—a dish that neatly captures the way cuisines overlap and echo each other. The chutney itself is rooted in South Indian cooking, but in this case it was inspired by a Mexican salsa she tasted in South Carolina, then tossed with noodles in the style of a Chinese-American sesame noodle salad. It’s rich with toasted sesame, gentle heat, and just enough sweetness and acidity to make it hard to stop eating. (You can find the recipe in her book).

Our conversation moved between what was happening in the pan and much bigger questions: Indigenous foodways, immigration, parenting, politics, and the limits of television as a medium for telling complex stories. The interview below has been edited for clarity and length.

Kenji: Before you started Taste the Nation, what did “American food” mean to you?

Padma: I grew up in immigrant enclaves in New York and Los Angeles, so I always knew there was a huge amount of diversity in American food. I went to school with Filipino kids, Chinese kids, Mexican kids, Korean kids. I always knew that all of this beautiful food existed.

But beyond the coasts, I hadn’t really traveled. That’s what Top Chef and Taste the Nation allowed me the privilege to do. And what I’ll tell you now is that I think American food is the most exciting food on the planet, because it incorporates all these other flavors from around the world. In a sense, we’re a microcosm of what world cuisine looks like.

Kenji: Did your idea of American food change as you worked on the show?

Padma: Yes, it really did. I didn’t understand indigenous food beyond the idea of the three sisters—beans, corn, and squash. I didn’t understand that the foods we eat today—beef, pork, chicken, wheat, apples—aren’t indigenous to North America.

Those animals may have existed here, but they weren’t eaten for food by Native peoples. People ate things like turkey, elk, venison, and that varied greatly depending on where you lived. Learning that reframed everything for me.

Even cuisines we think of as deeply American, like Hawaiian food, have been shaped enormously by immigration. Japanese immigrants brought knife skills, technique, and ways of working that became foundational to Hawaiian cuisine. You start to see all this co-mingling, and it’s really delicious.

Kenji: One of the things I really like about Taste the Nation is that it doesn’t feel preachy, even though it’s clearly political. Was that intentional?

Padma: Yes. One of the reasons for doing the show was to hopefully entice people who don’t think like me, who aren’t pro-immigration, to get curious about the food.

And if they’re curious about the food, hopefully they’ll be curious about the hands that make the food. A lot of foods people already enjoy—apple pie, hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza—those are all foods with immigrant histories. People don’t always realize that.

Kenji: Was there an episode that surprised you the most while filming?

Padma: Puerto Rico really surprised me. Most people don’t even realize that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. They’re American.

Their culture is influenced by Spanish culture, by Taíno or Indigenous culture, and by American culture. And when you talk to people there, you find really strong opinions—but very different ones. Some people want independence. Some want statehood. Some want to remain a territory. They’re not a monolith.

Even food debates get intense. Some people swear you can’t eat pasteles without ketchup, which is the most “American” thing imaginable. And others say, “Never ketchup.” You go into neighborhoods and people disagree, and that’s fascinating.

Kenji: You’ve talked before about learning more about Gullah Geechee culture in South Carolina. How did that come about?

Padma: I learned about Gullah Geechee culture while filming Top Chef. I met chef BJ Dennis, and what he told me really stuck with me. It made me curious.

When I started creating Taste the Nation, I knew I wanted to go back to Charleston and learn more. Gullah Geechee culture spans the Carolinas and parts of Georgia, especially the Sea Islands. Those islands didn’t have bridges until the 1950s, so a lot of West African traditions brought by enslaved people were better preserved there.

That’s how we get things like benne seeds—sesame seeds. And you start seeing connections between West African foodways, Southern food, and even dishes that show up elsewhere. It all starts to connect.

Kenji: You seem to have a really natural rapport with people from very different backgrounds. How do you approach that?

Padma: Being on Top Chef for a long time helped. I’m a known entity, but many people still had no idea who I was. That’s really a testament to my producers.

We approach interviews with a clear thesis, and we’re transparent about what the episode is about. It’s not the same story every time. People want to tell their story because, frankly, no one has ever asked them before.

We also vet people carefully and make sure they’re comfortable. And we’re always ready to go off topic, because you never know what you’re going to find.

Kenji: Did your thesis ever change while you were filming an episode?

Padma: Sometimes, but rarely. The harder part wasn’t changing the thesis—it was figuring out how to approach each episode and what we wanted that community to teach us about immigration.

For example, in the Cambodian episode, that was really my response to people who say immigrants drain the system. These were refugees who arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They weren’t here on work visas. They were asylum seekers.

They came to a Massachusetts town that was struggling—rent was cheap because no one wanted to live there. And within a generation or two, they revitalized the economy, cleaned up the river, and rebuilt the community. That’s a story not many people know.

Kenji: What was the hardest part of making the show?

Padma: What you have to leave out. That’s always the hardest part.

In the Cambodian episode, we filmed this beautiful sequence with a traditional Thai dancer who was also a drag queen. He talked about his parents, who were very traditional and conservative, and how they struggled with his sexuality; but eventually came around out of love for their son.

It was such a compelling story, and we didn’t have time for any of it. I could cut an entire additional show just from the B-roll.

Kenji: How do you think about parenting while being such a public figure?

Padma: It’s hard. I try to protect my daughter as much as I can, but it’s like shoveling while it’s still snowing.

She’s almost sixteen now. She understands social media. She doesn’t have it anymore. I saw it wasn’t having a good effect on her. She’s not happy about that decision, but I tell her, “Put it in the wheelbarrow. You’ll thank me later.” I want her to be free of it for as long as possible.

Kenji: What advice would you give to home cooks who are intimidated by ingredients they’ve never used before?

Padma: Use that ingredient in something you already know well. If you’ve never used sumac, don’t start with a complicated recipe. Add it to mashed potatoes. Something very simple.

Taste what it does. You’ll learn that it adds brightness, tartness, sourness. Then later, when you want acidity without adding liquid like vinegar or citrus, you’ll know to reach for it. Otherwise it just sits unused in your cupboard.

Kenji: What did Taste the Nation allow you to do that Top Chef didn’t?

Padma: It’s much closer to who I am. I love anthropology. I love local history. I love travel. I love learning about people through food.

Top Chef is wonderful, but it’s a show for professional chefs. I’m a home cook. I’m a spelunker. Taste the Nation let me go much deeper into a single place or community.

Professionally speaking, creating that show was the most gratifying thing I’ve ever done.

Kenji: Do you think of food as inherently political?

Padma: Yes. Absolutely. Food touches every system—agriculture, labor, health, commerce, nutrition, access.

Who gets to eat? Who has access? SNAP benefits, food deserts—these are all political questions. Food is so basic to human existence that it has to be political.

Kenji: Is there a future for Taste the Nation?

Padma: I hope so. It’s on the bubble right now.

I’ve also just finished filming a new show for CBS. It’s a competition show, but it’s very stripped down—no bells and whistles. It’s really about the cooking and about supporting chefs rather than throwing constant obstacles at them. It premieres March 4th.

Padma's All-American is available fro Book Larder, or wherever you get your books.