What Top Chef loses when it loses Padma

After 17 years, 19 seasons, and nearly 300 episodes of “Please, pack your knives and go,” longtime Top Chef host, judge, and executive producer Padma Lakshmi announced that she’ll be doing just that following the big Paris-set finale of Top Chef: World All-Stars, which airs on Bravo on June 8.

The multi-hyphenate TV personality—a bestselling cookbook author, a staunch immigrant-rights activist, the possessor of otherworldly cheekbones—revealed the exit via an Instagram post on June 2, writing to her million-plus followers: “After much soul searching, I have made the difficult decision to leave Top Chef. Having completed a glorious 20th season as host and executive producer, I am extremely proud to have been part of building such a successful show and of the impact it has had in the worlds of television and food. After 17 years, many of the cast and crew are like family to me and I will miss working alongside them dearly.”

“I feel it’s time to move on and need to make space for Taste The Nation, my books and other creative pursuits,” she added, referring to her other food-focused series, a James Beard Award-winning Hulu travelog that follows Lakshmi as she explores and eats her way through the immigrant communities that have shaped the American food landscape. (The 10-episode second season premiered on the platform on May 5.)

In all but one season of Top Chef (cookbook author and television personality Katie Lee served as host during the competition’s inaugural season), Lakshmi has been the face of the Emmy-winning foodie franchise. And the show has greatly expanded not only in scope—along with numerous international adaptations, the series has generated multiple spinoffs, including Top Chef Master, Top Chef Junior, and Top Chef: Just Desserts, among others—but also in significance since premiering in 2006, a growth that’s inextricably tied to Lakshmi’s own evolution as a TV host (she has four Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Reality Host) and a food-world icon.

‘An incredible legacy’

“Padma Lakshmi leaves behind an incredible legacy on Bravo’s Top Chef,” an NBCUniversal spokesperson said after news hit of the host’s departure. “Her impact on the Emmy, James Beard, and Critics’ Choice Award-winning series is undeniable. We are grateful to Padma for being a consummate host, judge, and executive producer, and for bringing her ingenuity and exceptional palate to each episode where she ate every bite of food on the series for over 17 years and 19 seasons. She will always be part of the Top Chef and the NBCUniversal family and has a seat at the judges’ table anytime.”

However, Lakshmi’s culinary acumen wasn’t always particularly valued, especially back in the show’s beginnings, despite the fact that she had already penned an award-winning cookbook, Easy Exotic, and hosted the Food Network series Melting Pot and Planet Food prior to joining the Bravo comp. “‘Top Chef’ offers the reliable, although perhaps not always intentional, hilarity of its blunt product endorsements and of its host, Padma Lakshmi, a.k.a. Mrs. Salman Rushdie, a model-turned-actress whose epicurean musings are less riveting than her sluggish, mouth-full-of-molasses style of speech and strenuously come-hither poses,” former The New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni brutally wrote following Lakshmi’s debut in the show’s second season. Ironically, in that very same publication, Lakshmi would later give her reasoning for joining the reality show in the first place: “I liked how serious they were about the food.”

The fact that Padma Lakshmi seriously knows and loves food was always there, a simple truth often eclipsed by her runway-ready appearance. Because she’s not just a supermodel who happens to have a good palate. She’s a real-deal gourmand with a voracious curiosity, a legendary appetite (unlike her fellow Top Chef judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons, who only taste during Elimination Challenges, Lakshmi is tasked with eating every single dish produced on the show), and an encyclopedic knowledge of seasonings (literally, she wrote 2016’s The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs).

When Padma says something tastes good, you believe her, because she’s not only the Top Chef viewer’s guide through all of the QuickFires and Restaurant Wars and “mise en place” races but also its plate-licking proxy, a through-and-through food geek able to seamlessly navigate cultures. She was born in India, emigrated to Elmhurst, Queens—one of New York City’s most ethnically diverse neighborhoods—and raised in the Hispanic-heavy city of La Puente, California. What’s more, she’s fluent in several languages (four, to be exact: Tamil, Hindi, English, and Italian).

Advocacy of international flavors, immigrant traditions

For 17 years, Lakshmi has combined that enthusiastic, everyman hunger with formidable expertise. In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, Lakshmi revealed that she personally whipped up a textbook dal (India’s slow-simmered split pulses) on set to instruct the season 20 contestants following a thali-themed comp: “I was surprised by the struggle they had with dal, frankly. There are 1.4 billion Indians in the world. If you’re going to compete on a world stage, and you’re going to London, chances are you’re going to have Indian food, especially with the Indian host. She happens to be one of the producers of the show. [laughs] So you should find out about dal.”

Her decades-long advocacy of international flavors and immigrant traditions no doubt had a direct effect on the diversity of Top Chef’s casting over the years, especially when you remember just how white, male, and French-trained those early seasons were. And as much as she championed the food itself, Lakshmi cheered on the humans behind it, offering up empathy and support through the harshest of judgments and the most heartbreaking of eliminations. (There have been more than a few “Please, pack your knives and go” delivered with tears in her eyes and a wobble to her voice.)

Bravo has already ordered a 21st season of Top Chef, which means the show will literally and sadly go on without Padma. (In our opinion, production should pull a Jeopardy and hire from within the Top Chef family: a former contestant—ideally a woman of color who can hold space for many cultures and cuisines, just like their predecessor—such as Kristen Kish or Carla Hall or Melissa King.) However, it’s fitting that Lakshmi is saying her goodbye after this most recent season, its most global iteration yet, pulling players from Top Chef offshoots all across the planet. It’s a testament not just to how far the cooking series’ influence has stretched over nearly two decades, but also a moving tribute to Lakshmi’s far-flung passion for all things food.

“What the show does, if you stick around long enough, is to tell people your story professionally, right?” Lakshmi told Entertainment Tonight back in 2021, about Top Chef’s enduring legacy. “It shows you a very particular side of these chefs. Not only their professionalism and creativity, but also where they’re coming from, what their philosophies are, and how they handle pressure.” Funnily enough, Top Chef showed us all of that about Padma, too.