Critics at Large Live: Padma Lakshmi’s Expansive Taste

0:28How you doing? This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham. I'm Alex Schwartz. And I'm Nomi Fry. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture and how we got here. And this week, we're sharing a conversation we had live on stage at the New Yorker Festival just a couple of weeks ago. Yes, every year we get to do a version of the show in front of an audience of New Yorker fans, subscribers, what have you. And this year, we got to have a conversation about taste with producer, writer, and host Padma Lakshmi. So today, we're sharing it with all of you so that listeners who weren't able to make it to the festival can still be part of the fun.

1:13And by the way, if you were there, shout out to you. Thank you, as always. Enjoy.

1:28We're going to be joined in just a minute by the incredible Padma Lakshmi. Padma, yes. Padma is an Emmy-nominated producer, a television host, a food expert, and a New York Times best-selling author. Padma served as a host and an executive producer for 19 seasons of The Amazing Top Chef, which was nominated for 47 Emmy Awards during her tenure. That's a lot of Emmy nominations. It's so many Emmys. Her newest project is a show called America's Culinary Cup for CBS. Basically, as you know, Padma is a fixture not only of food culture, but really culture writ large. And we're so happy to have her here with us today.

2:15Guys, what's the Padmaverse that really speaks to you? I mean, she's a judge. She's a famous, famous judge. You know, was such a fixture on Top Chef. She was like part of our, you know, kind of ambient TV culture for so long, 19 seasons, as you said. You know, I was always a little bit terrified of Padma from Top Chef, which I think is an appropriate reaction to have to her because she's exacting and she is a person of great taste and judgment. Then I watched Taste the Nation and I was like, oh, there's a whole other side to this wonderful person. You know, I think probably a lot of people in this room have seen Taste the Nation.

2:55And it's the show where Padma goes around the United States and travels to different communities and learns about a lot of cultural, very specific cultural cooking in different places around the country. And it's a beautiful show. And sort of riding on the wind of that beautiful show is the new, you can't really just call it a cookbook. It's a cookbook and also a collection of essays. It's called Padma's All-American. It's based on all of the people and recipes that she encountered on Taste the Nation. And the book shares all kinds of home recipes from many families, third culture families across, as is implicated in the title, The Nation.

3:32And when we were thinking about what we could talk to Padma about, we were just circling this idea of taste, not just in the culinary sense. But, of course, she has a lot to say about that. But Padma is just a person of exquisite taste in everything that she does. And so we want to talk to her as critics, people who, on some level, our life, our livelihoods are taste. We wanted to talk to her about being a person of discerning taste in all the many prongs of her life and career. Why do you guys think taste matters so much right now? What is the, I don't know, it just feels like such a grounding force for me.

4:11What's the deal about taste today? Well, because I think taste is, it gives these two connecting points between your individuality and then a bigger collective that you're part of. You know, your taste defines you, what you love to watch, the way you want to dress, what you like to eat. These things come to us from external sources. And then we take them and we make them our own. And when we find people who click with us, who is like, maybe you all like the same podcast for some reason. Yeah, whatever, right? Maybe you're in a room of people and you look around and you realize that you all enjoy listening to the same show every Thursday or whatever it might be.

4:44You feel plugged into something bigger. And I really think that we all feel very atomized right now. And that kind of double-edged thing about taste where it can distinguish you, but it can also connect you. I think that's what got us excited because that's what we love doing on the show. Yeah. And I think, too, I mean, we just just a couple of days ago, a new episode of our podcast came out and it was about AI. And I think one of the things that we were discussing and thinking about, and I think it's something that's bothering a lot of people right now is is thinking about how the concept of taste and what makes good art and good life is is under attack right now and it makes sense to try and figure out and retain what's good about you know everything around us to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, you know, the gems from the slop.

5:43And so I think everything we see around us is kind of a call to arms to think about why taste matters. Beautifully said. We're going to talk about all of that and more right now. Without further ado, join me in welcoming our guest, the incredibly talented host, writer, producer, Padma Lakshmi.

6:14Thank you so much. So let's kind of just start by jumping straight into the deep end. We'll sort of weigh it our way out. What do you think, Padma, it means to have good taste? I think it means to know good from bad. pleasurable versus punishing in some cases to your palate, to your eyes, to your sense of propriety, you know, in many cases. And it's very subjective. But I also think in certain cases, it's like what that judge says about porn. It's hard to explain, but everyone knows when they see it's true it's something that's hard to define certainly but I'm wondering if over the course of your life I mean this is kind of a big question but like your journey through life I mean can you think when you stop and think about it the development of your own taste like do you remember how it started I think my grandmother was really good at helping me develop my palate and when I was young, I always was excited about trying all these things that you wouldn't normally give to children, you know, very spicy foods, pickles, chilies, all these things.

7:29And for me, my sense of taste is very attached to my physical senses, first and foremost. And so I think those are my earliest memories. And also, you know, in India, when women wear saris, there's a hunt for that perfect blouse to match the saris because we all get our sari blouses tailored and so I spend a lot of time sifting through a lot of fabrics with various aunts and being dragged to these beautiful textile stores there's a beautiful store in Chennai called Nali and you go there and it's got reams and you know just like bolts and bolts and bolts from floor to ceiling room after room floor after floor of these beautiful colors these saturated silks and cotton And I think just being able to see color, differentiating nuances, subtle nuances in the color blue and how there are millions of shades of blue.

8:25And in my way, in a very rudimentary way, I learned, you know, sort of at the hem of my grandmother, sorry, so to speak. You've spoken a lot about coming to this country at the age of four years old. And also, I think of you as a great New Yorker, someone who loves this city precisely because of that sort of excess of things to see and taste and touch. Do you remember your first impressions of New York and whether that contributed to this thing that we're talking about? Like, how do you develop what mattered to you? I remember arriving at JFK. I came as an unaccompanied minor. My mother was there, and she had this crocheted blanket over her arm.

9:09I think she was afraid I was going to be cold. I came at this time of year. I came on Halloween night. I arrived. And I remember going home, and my mom had a big plate of candies, and I thought they were for me to welcome me. And then the doorbell kept ringing. And these very garishly dressed children. And people kept coming and they kept opening their bags. And my mother kept emptying that plate of candy into their bags. And I thought, wow, America, this magical land where all you have to do is put some weird clothes on and people give you candy. Too true, too true. Yeah. And so she explained the holiday of Halloween.

9:55And it still remains my favorite holiday because I feel like it's the day, you know, speaking of taste, where you don't actually have to exercise your taste. And you can be as monstrous or garish or, you know, if you're a teenage girl, slutty as you want. Nobody says anything. And I think that freedom of expression, even as a four-year-old, made an impression on me. Interestingly, though, this Halloween thing, it kind of makes me curious about, obviously, an early part of your development as a public person, which is being a model seems a lot like this, sort of putting forward, whether it be clothes or other things.

10:36And the point of it being other people sort of apprehending you and projecting their tastes onto you. I imagine that that also was an education in aesthetics and taste as well. It was also an education in torture. because as a model, you have no power. You know, you're just a mannequin and you're there to sell the clothes. It's a business. And there are these flashes of wonder and joy where you shoot with a great photographer or a wonderful editor who's really very imaginative and you do extraordinary work. But mostly it's just doing what people tell you, standing where they tell you and faking like you feel sexy when you're really just itchy, you know, or cold or too hot.

11:23But it was, it is a challenge and it taught me a lot. I mean, modeling also afforded me the ability to travel as a young person in a way that I would have never had the resources to do. Will you tell us a little bit more about what travel brought to you? Because I think it's an interesting question in general, and clearly it's had so much influence on how you see the world and yourself in the world. And also when we do talk about taste, I think sometimes there's this idea that it's a very fixed thing. And instead, I really think it's much more of like an educational experience because you have to encounter new things to know what you like, what you don't like, to have a broader view of life in the world.

12:01The more you live and the more you travel and the more you educate yourself and learn, the more expansive your taste becomes, your sense of taste, but also hopefully the better it becomes. You know, I mean, I think the best thing that happened to me was all that travel. And because I was an immigrant in this country, I was always straddling two different cultures, two different points of view. And traveling afforded me that. It first of all gave me an education. I mean, I had a good education in spices because of where I come from in South India and my own food culture. But then it was really after college when I had the chance to travel through Europe where I learned about European cooking technique.

12:43And before then, I could never afford to go to those restaurants. Little did I know they even existed. I didn't know what an amuse-bouche was or a tasting menu. Now 13-year-olds talk to me about it as I'm hailing a cab, and I think that's because of Top Chef. But I think travel is the single most important thing you can do as a young person, however far you can get in whatever way you can go before you have a really serious job or a family that ties you to one place. You know, I lived in Italy for six years. I also lived in France for two of those years. I sort of went back and forth between Milan and Paris.

13:21And so I think it really opened my eyes. And I didn't grow up like that. You know, my mother's a nurse, my stepfather's a plumber. And when I first got to Paris, I had no money. And I was doing very low rung modeling. But my theater professor was on sabbatical. in Paris with his family. And I had worked as a work-study student with his wife, who was head of the costume department. I was a theater major. And so they just took pity on me. And I moved out of the model's apartment, which was five girls to two rooms, onto their couch, which was a vast step up. And Michael, my old professor, loved to cook.

14:00And through Michael, I learned a lot about French food and french culture so little by little i just hoarded all the information i could get because i was interested in it i didn't even know what lay ahead of me yeah we have a question from the audience what's the difference i've never thought about this in this way what's the difference between someone with taste and someone who's picky oh man that's a great question There's such a, like, pickiness, I think, about food, but other, you know, what's the difference? The difference is a person who has taste has it because they're willing to try many things.

14:40And a person who's picky has no taste because they don't want to try anything. Yeah, I think that's right. Because pickiness is much more about what you do not like. Right, right. And you do not like most things. And will not try. You know, I don't think that my toddler has taste. don't think that toast for dinner is taste. Right, that's the other thing. I met your son and, you know, I beg to differ, but continue. I mean, it gives itself to blandness. When you have a picky child, it's not because he only likes to eat like the most exquisite kind of spice. You know, he wants toast. I mean, I'm sure in New York, there is like a caviar child.

15:19I mean, that's also annoying. And it's like caviar again. He'll be featured in next week's episode, I'm sure. Yes. Yeah.

15:32Stick around for more of our conversation with Padma Lakshmi live at the New Yorker Festival. That's right after the break.

15:46Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co-host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

16:28We are all critics, which means that we often exercise our tastes and sometimes our judgments in public. And you have done this on Top Chef. And you're going to do it again in America's Culinary Cup. Is there like a philosophy that you have of how to render judgments of other people's work in public? Right, because for us, we do it. And then people just hate us and it's fine. You mean like you're not looking someone in the eye? But we're not looking someone in the eye. You looked a lot of people in the eye. Yeah, exactly. And told them to pack up their knives. And I would imagine, yeah, like Vincent says, it's like, how was it also a learning curve for you, you know, from beginning to be that and then over the course of, you know, 19 seasons?

17:08No, I mean, I'm a pretty opinionated bitch at the best of times. You know, I'm not short of opinions on anything. I try to keep them to myself unless I am actually an expert or someone asks. And I also had a lot of evidence about what not to do based on the people who were sitting next to me at times. Okay. Can you say more about that? Please say more about that. It's not so much what you say, but how you say it. Okay. And I think it's very important to look someone in the eye when you're critiquing them because it shows that you stand by your opinion. and it's very easy to answer your question.

17:51The way that I always approach my work on Top Chef and now on America's Culinary Cup is I'm interested in giving you information that's useful. I'm not interested in berating you or attacking you personally. I assume that you are as serious about your work as I am about your work. I always try to be constructive in my criticism. I don't ever say I don't like this. If you watch me on that show, I say what could make it better, what I don't think worked, why I don't think it worked, and what it felt like to eat it. Because unlike other competition shows that have to do with craft, whether it's Drag Race or any, you know, American Idol, The Voice, or even Project Runway, you can see the clothes.

18:45You can see the models walk on the clothes. You can see them dance. You can hear them sing. But on Top Chef, you're really relying on us to give you a vicarious experience to describe what we are eating, what the mouthfeel is like. Is it spicy? enough? Is it balanced? Is it greasy? Does it make you want to take another bite? Does it remind you of your grandma's rugelach, whatever it is, you know? And so I see my job as helping. I see my job as the person in the kitchen that you would say, does this need a little salt? And you want constructive criticism. If you are a good friend, you tell that person the truth in a kind way that will help them.

19:29You know, I want my friends to tell me what they really think because I want them to make me better because I want to be better. And I assume that you want to be better too. That is exactly what I'm going to tell anybody who is pissed about a bad review that I've written. I want you to be better. I do really relate to that though. I think that, I think that very often, you know, it's an interesting question about negative criticism. I'm sure we've all gotten it because, of course, there is criticism that is done from spite or from jealousy and all kinds of negatively motivated things, but I think that really is the root of good negative criticism.

20:08It's, I want this to be better, and it could be, and in some ways it's an affront that it's not, maybe. Yeah, I mean, I also think, you know, you do it in The Written Word or on your podcast, I do it on television, There is an element of entertainment to that, you know? Of course. So there is a way to deliver that information that's also witty and entertaining, you know, funny or erudite or illuminating, what have you. But it has to be true in order for that to work. So we're talking about judgment on a show like Top Chef on your new show that's coming up. But then, of course, you have Taste the Nation and your new cookbook, which is a different kind of project, right, where you go and you explore and you talk to people and you taste perhaps with a different.

21:03It's not that your taste changes, but your intention, you know, and your transmission of what you want to say is different. How is that for you transitioning from this mode of judgment or critique to this other mode of maybe exploration or investigation and more of a sharing? It's great. I mean, there's more of me in Taste the Nation than any other project I've done. And that was the first time that I got to make all the decisions and really make all of the editorial choices. So if you're, you know, it's only a 30 minute show. So if you're seeing it, it means I think it's worthy of being featured.

21:44I have so many great field producers who worked with me on that show. and we all took a really serious proprietorship over that show because the mission of that show was really important and the mission of the book goes deeper than we had time for in the show, but it is very much the same. It's sort of the last seven years of my life in food and it's five years traveling all over America for eight months a year, you know, road by road, city by city, and really finding what I thought was important to bring to a larger audience. People in those communities, of course, knew about them. It wasn't some big discovery, but it was just a way to build community between Americans in a positive way.

22:33And everybody likes to talk about food. So it's also a gentle way in to talk about some more serious things. And the title is a play, obviously, on Face the Nation. and it's really a cultural, anthropological, political show masquerading as a food show. It's not a lifestyle show, right? You're not going to learn where the coolest, trendy place is, that there's a line down the block. You're going to learn about some abuelita who's making Amazonian tamales that many Peruvians don't even know about, but should. You know, one thing that really strikes me about Taste the Nation is how you're going to all these different cultural communities And what you see again and again is how much pride is wound up in this question of taste.

23:17And I wonder if, you know, you could talk a little bit about what you saw with that, because it just people get their taste in many cases by inheritance and then they expand it. They expand it because in a place like America, taste collides. You know, in big cities, you start eating foods. You know, you say in the introduction to your cookbook that gochujang and all these other foods, you know, are just part of the American pantry these days in a way that they certainly weren't when I was young. But this idea of pride and taste, I just found in your work to be really intertwined. So I'm just curious to hear about that, if that struck you as well when you were traveling around.

23:54I think people were really interested in sharing their culture through their food. and everybody will talk to you about, you know, their mother's casserole or their auntie's, you know, barbecue or whatever it is. And everybody has that recipe or that dish that's so important to them from childhood that they love. There's also biological reasons to that, you know, where your sense of taste, well, your sense of smell, your olfactory sense is a lot of your sense of taste. And where that is housed in your brain is very, very close to where emotional memory is also stored, which is why when you have something from your childhood, you know, it's that Proustian Madeline thing, right, where you're transported immediately.

24:42And I think people want to share that because there's so much emotion and history and personal narrative in that one little cookie or chicken leg or, you know, tamale, whatever. And I think it was very important to us to have people tell us their own stories and really tell us who they were rather than me tell the audience. I'm just the conduit. But I think what I wanted to do is show how beautiful and how delicious the diversity of American food and American culture is. And I just wanted to do it in a positive way, which wasn't wagging one's finger at others, but saying, actually, the thing that you're afraid of is the thing that's the most beautiful about our country.

25:33I think it's really about specificity. I think that's what kind of tells the show apart because it's all of these topics can seem quite abstract, right? It's like this great nation is made up of many different people. But then you actually, you're meeting with people. It's about humanism and it's about specificity. And that's where the food comes in as well, because what is more specific than the taste of a particular spice or herb that kind of like can stand in for a culture?

26:11Padma's really good at hosting and producing, but recently she started performing in an entirely new medium, comedy. That's after another break on Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

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