Photo from Hulu
By Louis Chan, AsAmNews National Correspondent
Long time Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi is serving up a delicious ten course meal and we’re all invited. Her new show Taste The Nation debuts Thursday on Hulu with each of the ten episodes focusing on the foods of a different immigrant community.
“As Americans, we love pad thai and sushi, we love egg rolls and shawarma, but we don’t often know very much about the people making that food that we love, who live right among us,” Laksmi told AsAmNews in an interview.
“Tell me what a person eats and I’ll tell you who they are. You can tell so much about a person by the food they eat,” Lakshmi continued. “And I was really interested in that. So I was really just using food as a vehicle to get deeper into these communities. And, and I was interested in them telling their own stories, because often, other people were, you know, kind of interpreting what their cuisine or culture was and I just, I wanted to give a voice to these people.”
The show is inspired by the host’s work with the ACLU and her passion for immigration rights. She had always intended to do a show about immigrants, and in the course of doing research for a new cookbook, she decided to combine the two. Lakshmi has temporarily put the book on hold to devote her energies to her new show about food, culture and immigration.
Much of the show is filled with raw emotion supplied by her guests. She encouraged them to open up about their personal lives and promised them anything they regretted saying would not make the final cut. As a result, Taste the Nation goes into some real heart-felt conversations ranging from Trump’s border wall to the incarceration of Japanese Americans to the real story behind chop suey.
“I’m not out to get anybody,” she says. “I really want the narrative of the food cultures to be shaped by the people within that culture. And so I just wanted to give them assurance that they could be as open with me because they would also have the ability to strike anything from the record if they felt uneasy about it after laying themselves out there.”
The star acknowledged that her most awkward interview so far has been with her own family. She spoke to her daughter, mother and father about Indian cuisine. Lakshmi acknowledges on camera she’s concerned if her daughter is embracing enough of her own Indian heritage. She spoke with her parents about their immigrant experience and at one point, her mother begins to tear up.
Lakshmi didn’t want to put her family through that, but says if she expected her guests to do it, she had to hold herself up to the same standard.
“Like that was a really big moment. I was asking other people to be vulnerable and let you into their lives. I had to, you know, be vulnerable myself and let people into my life and my family. And so, you know, I was uncomfortable with it, but there was no choice but to address it that way. It would have been hypocritical for me to do an episode on Indian cuisine and not be that open because that’s the very thing that I’m counting on from all of the guests have graciously gave their time and opened up their life.”
Lakshmi laughed when asked her how she eats on camera so gracefully. Food never seems to drool off her chin and her clothes remains spotless even after the greasiest of meals.
“It’s really weird that you say that and I guess it’s true,” Lakshmi said. “But, you know, whenever I’m drinking water in my own personal life, I often miss my mouth. Anybody who’s in my inner circle, friends or family, will tell you that. So I think that I’m hyper-aware because I’ve learned from years of experience on Top Chef, you know, we don’t have the budget to have two of every dress or shirt. So I do have to be really careful and mindful.”
She says Taste the Nation doesn’t have a makeup artist or wardrobe person standing by to come and save the day should an accident occur. Perhaps the messiest, yet most elegant scenes she’s ever filmed have been in her infamous Carl’s Jr commercial in 2009. If you’ve never seen it, be sure to watch it below. It’s a must.
“That was a way to poke fun at my particular career and, you know, it was also like a satire of like busting up all of those kinds of food shows as well. And so it was, you know, it’s meant to be funny. So it’s obviously very exaggerated.”
Lakshmi can only recall a handful of times when she’s had to spit food out on a napkin while filming. It happened once when the chef didn’t adequately prepare the chicken and it came out too raw and another when an artichoke hadn’t been cleaned.
She says she will pretty much eat anything for her show.
“I’ve eaten a lot of funky things in my life,” Lakshmi said. “I’ve eaten alligator and rattlesnake, kangaroo, Buffalo, elk and venison and I will try anything once. It’s part of my job.But in my own life, I eat pretty simply.”
Fans can also look forward to her upcoming cookbook.
“I think the book will probably be called the same thing but I’m not sure because obviously I had to put writing a cookbook aside, develop and film the show and so know that that happened. The cookbook may have things that the show in first season didn’t have, I don’t know yet.”
Hopefully, we’ll get more of the show as well. AsAmNews has previewed five of season 1’s 10 episodes. We can tell you Ali Wong will make a special appearance and that the show is worth the time it takes to watch. We give this show a hearty thumbs up and wish for more treats to come in an hopefully soon to be announced season 2.
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