Padma Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi is an Emmy-nominated producer, television host, food expert, a New York Times best-selling author and one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People (2023).

She is the creator of the critically acclaimed and Emmy nominated Hulu series “Taste the Nation”, which was the recipient of a James Beard Award. Lakshmi served as host and executive producer for 19 seasons of Bravo’s two-time Emmy-winning series “Top Chef”.

She established herself as a food expert early in her career, hosting two successful 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 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. In August of 2021 she published her first children’s book Tomatoes for Neela which was also a NYT bestseller.