I’m Padma Lakshmi, and my last meal would be nachos with a cheese fountain and an ice cold margarita with Don Julio 1942, dodo with coconut chutney and sambar. Then kettle chips topped with caviar, sour cream, and a little bit of chives. All cooked by my friend David Chang. Every person has exactly two things in common. We all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die. Today we’re joined by actor, model, author, executive producer, and host of Taste The Nation on Hulu, as well as 19 seasons of Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi. Welcome to the show. Hi. I’m excited to be here. I’m very excited for both of us, especially because the term nacho cheese fountain came out to play and that’s an incredible experience. I used to eat movie theater nachos when I was little and I always like a lot of pickled jalapenos on them. So when they told me that you had a fountain- I had a weird dream like this once and I can’t believe it’s come to fruition. We also do have to discuss the David Chang of it all. Okay. I do have some bad news. He’s not dead as far as I know. Okay. But if you will- I hope not. Padma, it’s your friend Dave Chang. I am so sorry that I can’t be there in person, especially since I would most definitely be there to cook your last meal on this planet, your last meal ever. You’ve traveled with the world, you know great, great things to eat and I don’t even know what I’d make you, so- Anything. I need more time to think about that. You have a great palate, you’ve seen it all. But you know what? Since I can’t be there, I’m a little relieved that I don’t have the pressure to cook for you your last meal. But we’re gonna miss you terribly. We love you so much. Congratulations on the Time 100. At least you got to see that before your last meal. Amazing. We couldn’t afford his in-person rate, but we were able to get him on Cameo. Actually, no, this was a personal favor that when we told him that you were eating your last meal, he sent a video and sent his regrets that he could not make it in person. So you’re stuck with us cooking your last meal. How sweet. That’s fine. I can see Dave anytime. It’s a massive downgrade, but Dave, come to Burbank. Please come to Burbank. Speaking of Time magazine, you were named one of the 100 most influential people of 2023. One, how did that feel? Amazing. I’m not gonna lie, it was probably a career pinnacle for me. You know, that party is the best party of the whole year. Do you strive for awards because of the parties? No, but they help. I bet they do. They help you show up. I mean, no, I don’t- I mean, that’s not an award that you can even strive for because I don’t know who decides. I’m sure somebody at Time or people at Time but I just have written profiles for other people who have been on the list over the years, a chef and and a music producer who won an Academy Award. And I just didn’t think it would ever happen to me. You know, that’s not something you grow up dreaming of. So I’m hugely honored, hugely privileged, and hugely hoping that nobody finds out I got on the list by mistake. But I’m excited. I mean, it’s just, that is like the big leagues. Yeah. And it’s very well deserved and you’ve always been one of my most influential people because you have told the story of eating whole ass pizzas in your bed alone. Often. Often? And from, Padma, from the entire bed eating community, I wanted to thank you for what your representation has done for us. So that’s everybody, bed eaters- It’s nothing, thank you. We know y’all are doing it. I mean, I love to eat in bed, I do. I have bed picnics all the time. Alone, with my kid, with anyone that will join me. I eat in the bathtub as we’ve seen, whole pizza’s there, too, you know. We have, can we get Padma some bubbles and a pillow? Guys, come on, what are we doing here? You ready to get into the meal? I am. Let’s eat. Padma, for your first course, you have the nacho cheese fountain. This is made with aged cheddar, jack and Gruyere that we actually emulsified with sodium citrate to give it the texture of nacho cheese. We have your entire bar of condiments, ground beef, jalapenos, olives, corn, tomatoes, black beans, guac, salsa verde, salsa roja, and some scallions, and then some freshly fried chips, a little bit of lime. And then we also have a lovely mocktail. Cheers and L’chaim. Thank you. But this would be made with Don Julio 1942 if there was alcohol in it, which there is not. It’s not bad. Not bad. Please, dig in. Have you ever done this before? Because I’m gonna follow your lead. I don’t think I’ve done it with a fountain. Okay. Are you gonna sauce the whole plate? Are you an individual chip nacho maker, or you’re like a whole saucer? Both. I respect it. Well, I mean, I like layers of it and I wasn’t sure whether I should put the cheese on at the end or at the beginning. So I’m gonna do both. Nice. Nice. Mmm. I can definitely taste the Gruyere. Yeah? Yeah. Because it adds a density to the jack and cheddar. It’s like that extra little like bit of nutty complexity that you actually kind of associate with cheese. But also using the sodium citrate in there, it is the same chemical in nacho cheese, right? Yeah. That’s what they put in Velveeta I think. Yeah, yeah. I’m a big fan. Well, everybody’s very particular about the way they like their nachos dressed, so I like mine dressed well. You also had an epiphany while eating nachos at a Green Burrito in La Puente when you were a teen, about the crossover between American, or Mexican American and Indian food. Yes, I did because, you know, and that- That idea has been born out through all my travels in Mexico, including a couple of finales that we’ve done with Top Chef there, because I think it’s the climate, it’s pretty similar. Yeah. In both countries. And so a lot of the same ingredients that are in Mexican food, you know, citrus, chilies, cumin, mango, tamarind, a whole bunch of other stuff. Cilantro, I could go on and on are also very prevalent in Indian food. And Mexican food is so vast and so complex and I don’t think, we’re clearly not scraping the surface of its complexity here, but this is lovely, too. It’s all good. Hey, this is part of the Mexican diaspora, you know. This is its own regional food for you. Yes, exactly. Should I turn this off? Is this sound distracting to you? Let, we can turn it off. We can turn it back on. Oh, now it feels deathly silent. This is incredible. Okay, so now you’re going to get to hear a crunch. Yes, yes, yes. Cheers. L’chaim. Smart. Oh my God, I’m so glad you did that. I know we already talked about you like eating pizza in bed, but the fact that you’re willing to do that at a shared table, it makes me feel so comfortable. And thank you for knowing that about me. I think food is better when it gets messy. Mm-hm. I love licking my fingers. I grew up eating a lot of food with my hands ’cause Indians eat with their hands at home. And so to me it doesn’t feel foreign. And when my daughter was young, I wanted her to know how to eat with her hands, too, when she went to India, which she’s been to like six or seven times. Well, then she started eating spaghetti with her hands. Did you like tell her not to or did you tell her to keep doing it? Well, I let her go for a while ’cause that it was so fun. Not only to see her do it, but to do it with her. And then I was like, you know, maybe this isn’t a good idea. I’ve never seen Italians eat spaghetti with their hands. And so because we arrived at that conclusion together, she was okay with not doing it. That’s kind of beautiful that you like let her actually explore that though, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So my best friend is Gujarati and so I grew up spending like three, four nights a week in his house during high school. And so I’d eat his mom’s cooking all the time. Which Gujarati food is delicious. It’s unreal, and all just vegetarian. Everything cooked from scratch. And so they would call like rotli shaak. We were like roti and subji. And so it’s, you know, a flatbread with some sort of delicious stew. And I started seeing the world in like roti and subji. And so I look at like Mexican food, I’m just like roti, tortilla, subji, some sort of stew or meat. Totally. Yeah. It’s exactly the same. It’s like, you know, Mexican food, especially from the Yucatan has all these beautiful stews, rocotos which are these spice blends and you know, they’re wet, but that’s what a curry is, and- Yeah. If you think about, you know, mole. Mole is really similar to a curry sauce. I have this theory that, because curry, people don’t necessarily know what the word means. I feel like people use the term curry in a very vague way. Where a lot of people couldn’t actually define it for you mostly because it was a colonized term, right? Mm. Well, there are different theories. So there are curry leaves, which have nothing to do with curry powder. Yeah. Or the stew of a curry or a dry curry, although they are used in both, okay. My stepdad actually is the largest grower of curry leaves in California. Get the hell outta here. I’m serious. So if you ever need curry leaves- I would love some. Let me know. Actually, I can get a curry plant for you so you should grow your own. That would be phenomenal, I would love to do that. I wanna ask you about Taste the Nation. One of my favorite things about it is that you often go outta the restaurant in people’s homes. You cooked with Madhur Jaffrey, you cooked with your own mother, Naz Deravian for the Persian episode in LA. In your memoir, you said that a majority of food in the world is cooked by women, yet it is the opinion of a few dead French men that actually gets lionized. Yeah. Was that like an important decision for you? It wasn’t an important decision, it was just a fact. Yeah. You know, most of the world is fed by women and if you talk to, you know anyone from David Chang to Daniel Humm or you know, anyone you want, they will tell you that they were really inspired by the women in their family. And that’s because typically the gender roles and this division of labor have meant that the women stay home and the men go out and hunt or forage or whatever it is. I, like everybody, love travel food shows. And you know, way back in my career, way before Top Chef, I had done a series for these documentary specials for the Food Network and British Television called Planet Food. And that was after Padma’s Passport. So I had done those two shows before. And Planet Food is basically a precursor to all of the food travel shows you see now. Yeah. Just with better hair. It was pre-Bourdain. Yes. Yes, it is pre-Bourdain. And I have to say, you know, and then in the 20 years since then, I saw all these male chefs kind of swashbuckling all over the world doing these food shows. And I love those shows, I have nothing against those shows. But I wanted to do a show that was really a female point of view. And it’s not a female versus male point of view. Sure. It’s just like, you know, food has so much to do with family, so much to do with culture, so much to do with emotions and comfort and nurturing that I wanted to talk about that. So much of food television is really either demonstrational in a cooking show or analytical like Top Chef is. Sure. And I wanted to do something that embraced all the tentacles that food has in our lives, in our civilization. And so, I wanted to talk about motherhood, I wanted to talk about family. But yeah, like you said, it’s not a female point of view, it’s your point of view. And I dunno if you know this, but Time Magazine recently named you one of the hundred most influential people of 2023. So it’s a pretty damn important point of view. And honestly, it comes through in the show and it’s a spectacular watch. Thank you. I’m very honored that Time saw fit to do that. It was surreal. I wanna talk about Top Chef because it, like you said, it is very analytical and it is somewhat, you know, more restaurant driven. You know, it’s been going on for 20 seasons now. You’ve hosted 19 of them. The restaurant industry especially has gone through a huge upheaval in the past, you know, 15 years. Especially with the Me Too movement. Do you think that Top Chef is trying to change with the times to sort of stop the deification of like the rockstar dude bro chef? I hope- Yeah. That we deify skill. Yeah. And excellence in the kitchen, no matter what the gender of the hands that are making that food. When I go into a restaurant, I don’t care if the chef has had a bad day, I just want my dish to taste just as good as the last time I had it at this restaurant, which is why I’m back. Mm-hm. And so often, I don’t even remember the last name of the contestants and I don’t want to. I do get a one sheet where it shows where they’ve cooked, who they’ve cooked under, any accolades they have, where they’re from. I read it two or three days before and then I toss it out. And I’m judging the chef by what’s on their plate. You know, I’m not interested. I mean, I hope that they’re respectful, but you know, chefs are a passionate people. Sure. So we don’t want any of that. Yeah. We don’t want it to be- We just want it to be about the food. And I do think that that is why Top Chef has succeeded all these years because it’s just the chef who did the best dish of the day on any given day in the competition. That is all. What can we expect from Taste the Nation Season 2? A lot. I mean, we go to Puerto Rico and that was really fun for me. ‘Cause I’d never, I mean, I’ve been to Puerto Rico once when we filmed the finale there. But when I’m working on Top Chef, I have no time. I barely have time to get enough sleep. But I knew a lot of Puerto Ricans growing up in New York. And I also knew that a lot of Americans considered Puerto Ricans immigrants. But they aren’t. They’re American citizens. Yeah. And it’s also, in my opinion, the last colony of America. And their food systems are suffering because of, you know, archaic law like the Jones Act, which is really to benefit corporations and not Americans. So we look at that and we look at a new farmer’s movement that’s happening there. We just don’t go into a city and then rinse and repeat. Yes, you get to know all about that community through its food, but also through music, through its literature, everything. But we try to look at this huge issue of immigration that is so integral to the foundation and evolution of this country as a superpower. So we try to look at a different facet of that, using these communities. So I go to Lowell, Massachusetts with the Cambodian episode. And that is a town that fell on really hard times. The property rates went down and all this stuff. Cambodians didn’t have any money. They came to Lowell because the rents were so cheap. And within a generation, they completely revitalized this city. You know, they opened businesses, they employed people, they even cleaned up the river. And so that is my answer to people who say we shouldn’t let immigrants in. We shouldn’t let asylum seekers in. You know, they’re not a drain on our economy. Our capitalistic system depends on new labor over generations and generations. And there is no generation that hasn’t been- Benefited economically and culturally and otherwise by immigrants. So rather than get on my soapbox, which I’m happy to do, I can show it- Yeah. In hopefully an entertaining and fun and deep, compelling way. You did study psychology, so I mean- For a bit before I changed my major to theater and American lit. You were so close to being a doctor, Padma. You’re so close. I know. Well, it’s okay. There are a lot of doctors in my family. Well, I mean, the premise of the show is really for people to tell their story as they see fit. You know, just to give my platform so that they can tell us who they are rather than other people deciding who they are. And I’ve had experience with other people owning my narrative and I wanna hear from them. I think that’s interesting. I think it’s compelling. I don’t, you know, it’s not just doing it because it should be done. It’s doing it because I’m fascinated- Yeah. By other cultures. And I’m glad to hear that other people are, too. All right, Padma, course number two. We have the dosas with the coconut chutney as well as sambar. We made the dosas ourself. Actually Nicole did this. She fermented the lentil and rice flour. She actually ground the rice and lentils herself, then fermented the flour, then made the dosa. She put a lot of work into this. Just straight up shout out, Nicole. I did nothing on this one. Nicole, I am so thankful. I want you to know that I have to go to my mom’s house for this. In fact, sometimes I don’t even grind my own dosa batter. I just buy the ready made . Yeah. Yeah. Because I always want dosas if I need them. So thank you, Nicole, it’s very, very sweet and thoughtful. Okay, so this is cute. We’re gonna share one dosa. This is like Lady and the Tramp. Like breaking a wish bone. Yeah. Yeah. I have to take two full corners into my mouth that way which I think I can do. Okay, so you wanna dip into the coconut chutney and then I like to do either the coconut chutney or the sambar. Gotcha, gotcha. I don’t do both of them. Nicole, you did a great job. Let’s go. Nicole, you really did, this is not easy to do. I tried and failed immediately and it was like Nicole, godspeed and good luck. God, we didn’t make- We got this from Miara in Palms, which is one of our shared mutual favorite restaurants. Yes, yeah, she’s great. Absolutely fantastic. I wanna talk a little bit about your story. You’re talking about telling other people’s stories, but you have a fascinating story. I just, you know, read your memoir. I told you about this- Thank you. Love, Loss and What We Ate. No, it’s an incredible book. The thing that struck me is it reads like a play about someone trying to find the meaning of life. Like that’s, is it to be accepted? Is it to be beautiful? Is it to be taken seriously? Is it to create something? Is it to create life? What do you find in this journey? Do you find the meaning of life because you traveled the whole globe, you did it. I think it was an effort to find myself. Yeah. You know, I speak to a lot of young women and they always tell me what they’re going through and I always try and make them feel better because I wish someone had done that for me. Sure. And I always say, you know, it takes time to figure out who you are and arrive at being who you’ve always wanted to be, known you were, hoped you’d be. And be often in such a fast paced world, especially, you know, with the media and social media and the internet, we don’t have that time and space. And so I knew that if my memoir was going to be something I was gonna be proud of, it had to be brutally truthful. And for so long, my story was told by other people. Mm-hm. You know? And my narrative was just taken away from me. What do you mean told by other people? You’re talking like journalists, tabloids- Yes. Stuff like that? I’m talking about journalists, I’m talking about tabloids. I’m talking about other people who, you know, were near me. And you know, there’s maybe some grain of circumstantial truth to all of that. Sure. = But it’s just spun in a different way. And it didn’t give context. Yeah. And I was trying to figure out who I was. I’m still figuring that out, you know? I think hopefully we change and evolve every day. And that- It’s weird to write a memoir also and then live past the memoir. And not die immediately afterwards. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. So now like I feel, you know, there’s so much more to write, but I’m very proud of that memoir. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I wish I had had a book like that when I was young because I didn’t know anybody who did what I did or wanted to do what I do. And so I’m glad it exists, you know. I’m very proud of that book and people are still discovering it. I mean, every day I’m very happy that readers write to me on social media. I read every single comment and I’m always like, thank you so much. You know, I’m so happy you read the book. Yeah. Because I am. Every reader is like my first reader to me. It’s the most important compliment I get. So I’m so thankful you read it, thank you. Most journalists don’t even do that. No, I’m shocked that I hadn’t read it earlier, honestly. Another thing that really stood out to me from it is that you have, from the outside looking in, so I had my background in journalism, right. And I ended up on YouTube and I looked at your career and I was like, that’s it. That’s like, man, she was a model. She, you know, was cooking at dinner parties with Don DeLillo, you know, all this type of stuff. But also at the same time you were like suffering in silence with endometriosis. You said you missed one week out of every month of your life. That hit me like a ton of bricks, wondering how many other people out there are suffering in silence Like that. 200 million women. Holy shit, you have a number. I do, it’s at least one in 10. Well, you started the foundation. You should know the number, I suppose. Yeah. I started the foundation in 2009. It’s called the Endometriosis Foundation of America. Because once I got on the other side of the pain, once I did get the surgery and the treatment that I needed, there’s no cure for it. But there is good treatment and there’s no prevention. We have more research now. And I was just so mad that I didn’t get the treatment I needed when I was 16 or 26- . [Josh] Yeah. Or 30. You know, my life would’ve been completely different. And so I didn’t want my niece or future generations of young girls or women to suffer like I did. It’s chronic pain, it sucks, and nobody wants to talk about their vagina. You know, like nobody wants to call their boss and be like, oh, I’m on my period again. But we should talk about. Come on YouTube and talk about your vagina. It’s the safe- Exactly. My vagina has a first name, yeah. No, not to the Oscar Meyer song. What if you get sued by Oscar Meyer over you singing about your vagina- Oscar Meyer should be happy because I rode around in the Oscar Meyer Mobile in Wisconsin when I did the German episode of Taste the Nation. So me and Oscar, we should be copacetic. We’ll see if we can get you an Oscar Meyer sponsorship for your vagina. You’ll have to vajazzle like Oscar Meyer logo on it. But it’ll, I think be really chic, be really in fashion. But you know, honestly, we have this education program and I ride along sometimes with our nurses who do it. And I went to the Beacon School and we actually ask to go into science classes so that we can speak to both boys and girls at the same time. Oh, cool. And this young boy came up to me after and he said, well, what would somebody do if they thought they had it? And I said, well, you could go on our website or you could ask your doctor for a specialist. And he said, well, when I was listening to you guys, I think my mom has it. Oh snap. And I don’t want her to suffer if she can get help. And I thought that young teenage boy is gonna be a great friend, a great partner, a great colleague, a great dad. Yeah. You know, and so we don’t think of it as a woman’s disease. Obviously, it is biologically, it’s a disease that affects you if you have your uterus. Sure. Endometriosis is really just when tissue that is similar to the lining of your uterus or the endometrium grows outside the body and it wreaks all kinds of havoc. But there are all these young boys now who are gonna be so sexy because they’re gonna be so understanding to their future girlfriends and wives. And you know, also to their friends, like I said. Excuse my reach. Oh please, please, please. No, you can have this closer to you, please. Well you can vajazzle your mons pubis. Vajazzle’s a gender neutral term. I think everyone can, everyone should vajazelle. Padma, for course number three, the final course of your last meal, we have kettle chips with sour cream and three different kinds of caviar. We have the black ossetra, we have the golden ossetra. And then just some simple trout roe. We didn’t know- Yay. If you like that as a little change up. Yay, yay, yay. Please dig in. Thank you for this. Oh, I’m so excited. Again, you can take caviar on the plane. Cheers. Cheers. Mm. You almost died once. Which time? That was crazy. You almost died a couple times. I wanna talk about the car crash. Oh my God. When you were a teen, that was like a very, very near death experience. Also, after being in the hospital for three weeks, you said you didn’t even know if your parents were alive or not. How did that change your perspective on life and death? Honestly, it, you know, I was 14 when it happened. That’s where my scar on my arm is from. It just for a while it made me an atheist, because we got in a car accident on way back from the Hindu temple in Malibu here. Tough to argue with the stats. Exactly. And then, you know, I would, I guess I would consider myself agnostic. I didn’t really feel very connected spiritually to anything until I had my daughter. Mm, interesting. You know, and I was told I couldn’t have kids. And it was devastating to me. I’m not someone who believes you have to have kids to be a whole person, but- Sure. I just love children and I wanted one, at least. And then when I got pregnant, I was really blessed. And I had such a hard pregnancy for so many reasons. And then I saw how my mother moved back in with me. And when your mom moves back in with you at 39, no matter how close you are, it’s interesting, you know. And I, the last time she took care of me, 24 hours like that, was when I was in the hospital. Yeah. And so it just came full circle. And I saw my daughter and you know, as my daughter was growing and her life was flourishing as an infant, someone very close to me, his life was diminishing. I write about that and Love, Loss and What We Ate. It really struck me to have the two people that I loved most, one my lover who died of brain cancer, as my baby, who wasn’t his, but who he loved like his own child, flourish, you know. It really confronted me with two opposite ends of life. And it did something to me. I’m not sure I can even articulate what that is, but it made me understand that, I don’t know if I would call it that God or even religion or spirituality, but I would call it something other than just the physical. Yeah. Even if you can’t explain it, you don’t need to explain it, ya know. I feel it. Yeah. I feel it and I feel it- I feel it when I go around the country and talk to all kinds of people on Taste the Nation. Mm-hm. You know, I really do. I’m so lucky to do what I do. Because I think everybody has an interesting story if you’re just willing to listen, you know. all you have to do is tell it the right way. Yeah. Or tell it, you know, and give them the space to do it. For me, writing Love, Loss, and What We Ate was the beginning of a whole new phase in my life. And I kind of feel like I’m starting a new phase in my life. I don’t know what that is and I don’t know where it will take me. But I do feel the beginning sizzle of it. Yeah. You know. It’s interesting ’cause you talk about your lover’s death and then you talk about the grief, like wrapping yourself in a cocoon. You said you were very comfortable in your grief, and so to talk about this being the start of something new, like it’s literally in the cocoon metamorphasizing, right? Mm-hmm. I’m curious what you meant though by like finding comfort in that grief or at least feeling comfortable in that grief. And anyone who’s gone through grief will tell you this. Long after everyone kind of goes back about their business and they still feel sorry for you- Sure. And stuff like that. But you’re still knee-deep in it, emotionally. At least I was. I was in a fugue, I was in this altered state for literally two years. Yeah. Because also what, you know, that person taught me in my life. He taught me about unconditional kindness. And it’s not something I expected to learn from someone in that package. But he was an extraordinary person and I put him through a lot. And I just did not feel comfortable being out in the world. And where I felt comfortable and where I felt at home was in the privacy of my own bedroom or my home, nursing my child, writing, doing the work I needed to do. And I let myself grieve. Yeah. And I think that’s really important. In this culture that we live in, we’re so obsessed with youth and energy and you know, everything new and we really are uncomfortable talking about grief and sort of transitioning in and out of grief. And I just come from an eastern background. I’m very Americanized ’cause I grew up in this country. I saw you eat nachos from a fountain. Exactly. And beef and everything other- Yeah, yeah. But in some ways I’m still very, very eastern. I’m very much Indian. And I think my approach to death, as is my approach to motherhood, is very eastern. And so what I meant by that phrase in the memoir, I felt comfortable wrapping the grief around me. I couldn’t function without accepting the deep hole in my life- Yeah. That Teddy’s passing had made. And it wasn’t even out of respect to him, though it was. It was out of respect for my own heart, which needed to heal so that I could take care of this little baby. And I didn’t have the bandwidth to do anything but be totally focused on her and totally focused on my work when I needed to be so that I could provide the quality of life that my daughter and I do enjoy. And I think people need to do that. I wasn’t upset at being sad. I felt that the sadness I was experiencing and the grief that I was experiencing was commensurate to the love that was between us. I don’t think I realized the depth of that love until I experienced that grief. And it was a privilege to grieve as much as I did. That’s what I mean when I say I wrapped my grief like a cloak around my shoulders and I felt comfort inside it. I never thought about grief as just in sort of antithesis or necessary antithesis to love. It is the shadow of love. Yeah. You know, and it is the shadow that love casts in its absence is as long as the love is. And I’m glad I grieved as much and as long as I did because he deserved it, but so did we. Yeah. You know? And at every stage of life is important, even physically. You know, my body has gone through so much. It’s gone through trauma, it’s gone through great periods, you know, it’s been big, it’s been small, you know, often in the same, you know, season because of Top Chef and everything. And I accept all parts of me. I accept all versions of me because they’ve all made me who I am. That’s what I try to tell other people, too. I try to say, you know, everything is important because everything goes in the sauce. Yeah. Even the single bay leaf. It’s important. I’m just saying, people think it doesn’t matter. I know, I know it does. It does matter. I have people close to me, too, who are like, I don’t get the point of bay leaves. I’m like, that’s ’cause you don’t get the point of the smell of bay leaves. You put it in because the person before you told you to put it in, the person before them- And to me that’s the idea of love and cooking. But Padma, thank you so much for your time. Are we ready to get in the lightning round? Okay. Let’s do it, let’s do it. Okay, I’m gonna keep eating. We like to end on an upbeat note. All right, can you out drink Tom Colicchio? No. Nobody can out drink Tom Colicchio. You don’t think I, ooh. I don’t know, I don’t know. Them’s fighting words. I know I can’t. If you’re a chef-testant on Top Chef, in what round would you be eliminated? Oh, probably in the first quick five. Yo, same though. Who plays you in the biopic about your life? Robert De Niro. He would kill it. Oh my God, the brown face would be horrifying, but he’s doing it. What song do you want them to play at your funeral? At my funeral? If you don’t answer in five seconds, we default to Bawitdaba by Kid Rock. No, no, no, no, no. I don’t make the rules. Um, no. It’s just happening. And cue up the Kid Rock. It’s gonna be an uncomfortable wake. How can I not know this? At Last by Etta James. Much better than Bawitdaba by Kid Rock. Padma, thank you so much for coming on the show. If you wanna deliver your last words right to that camera right there. Thank you. That’s my last words, thank you. All of it or just the thank you? Or thank you, that’s my last words, thank you. My last words before my last breath would be, Krishna, you got this, don’t give up. And then, thank you universe, thank you universe. And again, thank you so much. Make sure to check out Padma on season two of Taste the Nation on Hulu. Also, her incredible photo shoot for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition just dropped today. Check it out. A new mythical kitchen creature approaches. The pizzacock is here and available on a brand new apron. Come face-to-face with the mythical kitchen pizzacock apron now at mythical.com.