Padma Lakshmi is an Emmy-nominated producer, television host, food expert, and a New York Times best-selling author and one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People (2023).
Lakshmi serves as creator/host/executive producer of the new food competition show America’s Culinary Cup on CBS, featuring the country’s most decorated chefs. She is also the creator, host, and executive producer of the critically acclaimed Hulu series Taste the Nation, which ran for two and a half seasons and received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special. Taste the Nation was also the recipient of four Critics Choice Real TV Awards, two Television Critics Association Awards nominations, a 2021 Gotham Awards nomination for Breakthrough Series, and earned a nod from the Television Academy Honors, which celebrates programs across numerous platforms and genres that raise awareness about complex issues facing society.
In June 2022, Taste the Nation: Holiday Edition won a James Beard Foundation Award in the Visual Media — Long Form category. Lakshmi also served as host and executive producer for 19 seasons of Bravo’s two-time Emmy-winning series Top Chef, which had been nominated for 47 Emmys during her tenure, including her five nominations for Outstanding Host for a Reality-Competition Program.
Lakshmi is co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America (EFA) and an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Artist Ambassador for immigrants' rights and women's rights. Lakshmi was also appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
She established herself as a food expert early in her career, hosting two successful cooking shows — Padma’s Passport and Planet Food — and writing the best-selling Easy Exotic, which won the Best First Book award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Lakshmi followed this with the publication of her second cookbook, Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet, and her memoir, The New York Times best-selling Love, Loss, and What We Ate. She later published The Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs: An Essential Guide to the Flavors of the World. In August of 2021, she published her first children’s book, Tomatoes for Neela, which was also a New York Times bestseller.
The award-winning author’s latest cookbook, Padma’s All American, was released by Knopf in November 2025. This book is the result of five years of traveling and tasting, listening and observing for her show Taste the Nation on Hulu. The book features dozens of recipes from the immigrant and indigenous communities Lakshmi has visited, as well as many from her own family, showing what really comprises American cuisine.
Additionally, Lakshmi is a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has received the 2018 Karma Award from Variety and the 2016 NECO Ellis Island Medal of Honor, as well as a TIME Impact Award in 2023. Just when she thought her modeling days were behind her, she graced the pages of Sports Illustrated Magazine’s Swimsuit Edition in 2023.
