Hey listeners, Chris Kimball here. Sola El-Waley is coming to Milk Street Radio to answer your cooking questions soon. If you need new recipes or culinary inspiration, we're here to help. Or you can try to stump me and Sola with your toughest culinary mystery, like why your pie exploded or why your soup tastes just well off. Email us at questions at MilkStreetRadio.com. One more time, that's questions at MilkStreetRadio.com. And we'll be in touch. I'm Christopher Kimball, and this is a special episode of Milk Street Radio. Today, it's an extended cut of my latest interview with Padma Lakshmi. Padma does it all. She has a new book, Padma's All-American. She's the creator of the new culinary competition series, America's Culinary Cup. And every now and again, she does stand-up comedy. Padma, welcome back to Milk Street. Thank you. I'm glad to be here again. I've read a lot since our last chat about what you're doing now and there seems to be and I think you've said this yourself sort of a changing view of who you are comedy a new show so what is this new version of yourself or is it a new version it's just another part of yourself you want to explore I don't think it's a new version of myself I think I'm who I've always been. Perhaps it's just an evolution in the public facing version of myself. You know, sometimes when we're young, and I don't want to generalize, but I can say it was true for me. I, you know, fought against what the perception of me was, or what people wanted me to be, or I fought to be what people wanted me to be as well, you know, whether it was modeling or acting or writing, all of those things together made up my living. And I didn't really have any choice in the matter for a long time. I think I was struggling to come out from under that. I think I had a lot of imposter syndrome. For many years, you know, seven, eight years of doing Top Chef, I really felt at a disadvantage. And then at some point, I just decided I was going to be okay with me, even if anybody else wasn't. And if, you know, I was a walking contradiction, then so be it, you know? Well, yeah, I would say being a host of a cooking show for 17 years and then doing stand-up comedy is a pretty, you know, let me just, well, I'll get to that later, but I just imagine doing stand-up is, people who do it often comment it's one of the most frightening things in the world to do? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's excruciating and exhilarating, but mostly excruciating and sometimes exhilarating. Yeah, I mean, I think after so many years on Top Chef, I think I was a little burnt out. And so I really just wanted something to shake me up intellectually, something to jolt my creativity and challenge me in a way that I hadn't been challenged before. And so, you know, I'd been leading up to the comedy stuff for a few years, starting out with just hosting a show, live show here twice a year for charity in Brooklyn. And it just sort of ballooned from that. I wouldn't call myself a stand-up chameleon. I think this is something that I'm just dipping my toe into. The terror of the audience. I did a stage thing for a year or so. And what I remember is backstage right before I went on, sometimes there was a burbling and a bubbling and the audience was really excited. and you just knew you were going to have a good outing. And then once in a while, the audience was definitely quiet before you went out and you just knew that either it was going to be a complete disaster or you would have to just work your whatever off, you know, to bring them around. But it's that uncontrollable audience, right? This beast that sometimes is for you and sometimes is not. But I think that's the, for me, that was the fear factor was what's the audience going to do? Yeah. I mean, silence can be very frightening. You have to be okay with the silence. And that can be really unnerving because you don't know, are you penetrating? Do they like it? Are they focused? Are you bombing? And you're thinking all of those things while trying to be in the moment when you shouldn't be thinking about all those things. So, you know, it's very, very anxiety causing, to say the least. But when it's a good outing, it's a great outing, right? Yeah. And I think you learn, you know, you learn from all of your experiences. I mean, even the terrible ones, often you learn the most from that. Now, when you were just starting out many years ago, you were on a live variety show in Italy called Domenica Inn. Yes. That was a crazy show. I mean, you said the Italian analog for the Today Show. didn't look anything like the Today Show to me. People were dancing, doing all sorts of nutty things. And the quote is, Lakshmi's job was to play a caricature foreigner, exotic and fun-loving, whose not quite fluent grasp of the Italian language was exaggerated for laughs. So when did you learn to speak Italian? In Italy. I mean, I had a semester of Spanish under my belt, and then I started modeling. I went to Europe. I lived between Milan and Paris. And in sort of four or five years of being there, I learned to speak Italian quite well. So it wasn't that exaggerated. It wasn that much of a caricature to be honest I you know I did speak Italian in a kind of irregular way I learned from the cab drivers you know and I had a little segment in the show that you know was sponsored by an encyclopedia company and it was on Sundays. And so we had a lot of school children write to us. And so I would pick a name out of a fishbowl and I would call them and they would have to guess the meaning of a very difficult word. And I would also guess it was sort of like match game. They could either disagree or agree with me. And if they won, they got a whole set of reference books for their school's library. And the show was on from 2 to 8 p.m. with no five-second tape delay. But everything I use today, I learned on that set in Rome because it was live, because you had to think on your feet. And I still use a lot of what I learned from that experience in television today. It was a great, great training ground. Yeah, I was going to say that being a host of Top Chef would be much easier than doing what you did in a long, long, long Italian Today Show format, which was very loose. So when you hosted Top Chef for all those seasons, what's the job? I mean, a lot of it is just being a traffic cop. A lot of it is keeping things moving, making sure you get opinions from every judge on the panel. You know, a lot of it is just being a good host like you would at a dinner party, make sure the food comes out at the right time, make sure everybody meets everybody, everybody gets to talk, you know, all of that stuff. And it was grueling. I mean, the biggest thing you need to be the host of Top Chef is endurance and an ironclad digestive system. You're listening to a special episode of Milk Street Radio with Padma Lakshmi. Coming up, the secret to being a great judge on Top Chef will be right back. This is Milk Street Radio. Now let's get back to my interview with Padma Lakshmi. So when you have the judges, the best possible type of comment from a judge would be what? Are you looking for insight? Are you looking for humor? Are you looking for personality and something warm. Well, it sort of originates from who's a good judge and not. You know, the best judge is somebody who knows their profession well, is seasoned, but can also speak about it in a descriptive and informative way. Because honestly, like, it's a miracle that our show, Top Chef, has been successful for so long, because you can't taste the food, right? You're really relying on Tom, Gail, myself, and whoever those guest judges are to tell you what the experience of eating that food is like. So first and foremost, you want to have judges who can describe what they're eating in language that is evocative. And then you want their criticism always to be constructive. The comments that I don't like are when, or don't give me much to work with, I should say, are when people say, oh, that wasn't good. I don't like it. That doesn't tell me anything. All it tells me is that, you know, this person made something that failed for you, but doesn't tell me how and doesn't tell me why they're not going to move forward or doesn't tell the chef how they can make it better. I mean, if you really are passionate about your work, whatever it is, you want feedback and you want that feedback to be honest and constructive so that the next plate of food you make can benefit from it and your work gets better. And so if that person has personality and they have humor, that's a bonus. But at the very least, you just want them to be concise, informative, and descriptive. Yeah, I did once on Rachel Ray, I did a, there was a cooking competition that I was the judge of. And it was really hard because you had three people, very different personalities. I mean, the cooks, home cooks, and you feel like you're taking their life in your hands, you know, a little bit. Yeah. And I didn't think I would be, I thought it would be sort of cut and dried. I could just go, well, this is definitely the best dish. But it wasn't just about the dish. It was sort of about the people. And it was more of a people thing than I thought it was. Yeah, it is because, you know, any creative endeavor comes out of who you are inside and what you're thinking about or your personal history or your experiences. And so it is so subjective and personality dependent that you can't not factor that in. You said you came here when you were very young. You went back to India a few years later. Yeah. But there's a little quote I just want to read. We lived in a seaside town with my uncle and aunt and all my cousins in the same house. There were eight or ten of us in a two-bedroom flat, and I remember being very happy. Well, I mean, yes, I think I was happy because there were a lot of people there, you know, not in spite of it. I mean, the way I lived was not uncommon for middle-class Indians at the time. I mean, we all lived in multi-generational households, But, you know, what I may not have had in material possessions, I had as far as input and influence and love and care. And, you know, I just felt part of something and I didn't feel lost. I felt like I was where I belonged. I mean I missed my mother who was in America you know But I had this very bifurcated childhood where in America I was basically you know the child of a single parent who was a nurse and worked full time I was a latchkey kid in the seventies and eighties. And in India, you know, we had no personal space whatsoever. And I slept on the floor with my aunt in my grandparents' bedroom and we had no privacy, but there was a lot of love, a lot of stimulation, always somebody to play with or fight with. I had a lot of cousins there. And I hung out in the kitchen and I was very doted on by my grandmother. I was the oldest grandchild and I didn't feel like I was lacking in any way. A lot of people have said one of the problems now in America, at least, is that lack of sense of community and we're all, you know, nuclear families and, you know, people aren't sitting on their front steps at night and having a beer and talking, et cetera. So I can understand why that would be incredibly satisfying because you knew you belonged. Is that something you're able to recapture somehow through your career or with your daughter or is that just something that was part of your childhood that's not ever going to come back? I do miss that. I mean, I tried to create that in my home in ways that I can. You know, I'm also a single parent, but I have a very deep well of friends and family who live in New York and also in Connecticut. And so I try to create that for me and my daughter. The more you can enrich your child's life with different points of view from different generations, from people who've had all different experiences culturally and life experiences too, the more broad-minded, hopefully, that is the goal, that child will be, the more exposure they'll have to different points of view, really. In your new book, Padma's All-American, you talk about going to the San Carlos Reservation, Arizona, and that's where you learn a lot about indigenous foodways. So there's a lot of discussion about what exactly constitutes American food. So how do you reconcile foodways that are native to a place and a culture versus the mishmash of cuisines that we see so commonly today? Can you hold those two things in your head at the same time? Absolutely. I hold them all in my head. And it's about celebrating the indigenous food that existed and still exists in this country, but also learning from it and then adding to it with all of the wonderful flavors and ingredients that generations of immigrants have brought to this country. I mean, that also is our heritage now. That also is such an incredibly important part, not only of our food ways, but of the very tapestry of what our culture is. You know, both things can exist. All things can exist, you know, and that is how we eat as Americans, we're all dabbling in each other's culture. We are all eating everything all the time. And I think that is really what makes American food so exciting. You know, I want everybody to cook Indian food and Chinese food and Jamaican food. I just want us to give credit where credit is due. That's all. I mean, how boring would life be if we all just stayed in our own cultural silos rather than exploring this wonderful, vast world of flavor and ingredients that we're so lucky to have in abundance. I'm Christopher Kimball. You're listening to an extended cut of my interview with Padma Lakshmi. After the break, Padma's new show, America's Culinary Cup. This is Milk Street Radio. Now here's the last part of my interview with Padma Lakshmi. So let's talk about America's Culinary Cup for a moment. So this is your new TV series, which is kind of an Oscars of the food world, right? Yeah. But I read somewhere it's a crew of 350 people. Yeah, all told, yes. Really? We do a TV show of like eight people. So I'm trying to figure out in my head what you do with 350 people. It's amazing. Well, we had to build everything from scratch. And I wanted to custom design the kitchen so it wasn't a television set, but an actual working high-end kitchen. Is this on a soundstage of some kind? Yes, yes. And, you know, electricians, plumbers, fire safety people, engineers, carpenters, lighting techs, you know, all those people, the art department, it adds up. I mean, also, I had a lot of fully formed opinions about how I wanted to do things. And I'm very happy with the way the set came out. You know, it looks nothing like any other TV show you've ever seen. How is it different? Well, most sets are rectangular, and this isn't. It's oval. It has a lot more curves to it. You know, there have been studies done that people feel happier and are more productive in an environment with more curves. Like, that's not just rectilinear. and I wanted something that was almost theater in the round or in the oval. And every decision we made was in order to support the chef doing their best work. I think the ethos that I wanted to start with was different in that I not throwing obstacles at the chef You know I just wanted to do things differently because I thought that my genre of competitive cooking needed a refresh just not only for the audience and the people at home but for myself. I wanted to be stimulated again. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to see what I could do when I held the reins. And the winner gets a million dollars. Is that right? Yes, yes. The winner gets a million dollars. So you had no trouble finding contestants, I guess. No, well, that's the thing. You'd be surprised how many very, very well-known chefs a million dollars brings out of the woodwork. It's a lot of money. And so right away, it catapults everyone's game to a higher level. I will be watching the first episode intently. Yes, and please let me know. So I'm going to touch back on comedy again. So you get out on stage. You said them laughing at something you said is like sex without touching, which I thought was another great bottom of a quote. So just tell me about that first minute. So you get out there. Pause is stopped. Then what? What's going through your head? Well, a lot of it is also, you know, there's got to be like a mini preamble still, because, as I said, I'm so new at it that I have to, you know, kind of say you guys are probably wondering why that lady from Top Chef is standing here, you know, trying to make you laugh. But usually nowadays, I mean, my material is mostly about very quotidian things like what it's like to, you know, be a single mom and date at my age or, you know, a lot of it is about being an immigrant and how, you know, there's a real cultural divide or communication lapse between generations as well. Can you give me an example of that? Well, like a big one was I was doing a guest spot at Second City here in Brooklyn. And, you know, the audience has to give you one word and that has to inspire a story from your life. And so they said a couple of things and they said puberty. And I said, well, my daughter is in puberty. And at the same time, I am in perimenopause. So, you know, it's basically the estrogen wars. And then I just tell them real stories from my life that are kind of absurd. And, you know, my comedy is sort of nascent, as I said, but it's also liberating because I say things and my stand up, I would never say in a press interview or on social media or, you know, a network cooking show because it's not being recorded. And it's a pact that you make with the audience. It's like, we're going to have an open conversation here. And it's all going to be in the interest of making you laugh. And it's just something I enjoy. It's not, you know, I wouldn't make more of it. Unfortunately, I was outed in the 7,000 word profile in a New Yorker about it. But it was really something that was just sort of off to the side, you know, kind of lo-fi hobby that I enjoyed doing that was just for me, not really for everybody. And now, you know, it's sort of blown up into this thing that it really shouldn't be yet, to be honest. Well, I don't know. Makes you even more interesting, if that's possible. Thank you. Last thing. Is there something you're particularly grateful for that's unexpected in your life? I mean, obviously, fame, fortune, et cetera. But is there something small you're particularly grateful for? Yeah. I mean, I just like sharing things with people, and I like listening to people's lives. I think maybe I'm just craving connection in a world that is more and more isolated. But I like that human exchange. I like it preferably live. And I think that's also why I like stand-up. If you're willing to listen, if you're willing to scratch at the surface of someone's life and hear what makes them who they are, you will be changed for it. Something will seep into your subconscious and months or weeks later, I'd be like, oh, yeah, that thing was said to me. And now I really understand it in a deeper way. I think that's what I'm trying to do. And that is what guides my career. I think that is the only compass I can point to. Padma, this has been, not unexpectedly, a fabulous conversation. Thank you. Per usual. Thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you so much. that was Padma Lakshmi thanks for listening to this special extended interview to hear all of our episodes please head to milkstreetradio.com or wherever you get your podcasts you can also find us on facebook at christopher kimball's milk street on instagram at 177 milk street we'll be back later this week with more food stories and thanks as always for listening Thank you. in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Theme music by 2Bob Crew. Additional music by George Brendel Eggloff. Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio is distributed by PRX. From PRX.
