Padma Lakshmi Explains Why ‘Taste the Nation’ Is ‘A Political Show Disguised as a Food Show’

This story about Padma Lakshmi and “Taste the Nation” first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s Emmy magazine.

As a bona fide “professional food tester,” Padma Lakshmi has consumed pretty much everything you can dish up. (Even duck testicles, to cite one notable example.) But with nearly 18 seasons of hosting “Top Chef” and a bevy of cookbooks under her belt, she still had one thing she wanted to conquer: America. In her addictive Hulu series “Taste the Nation,” Lakshmi literally goes coast to coast, this time in the role of conscientious observer, gently ingratiating herself into the lives of chefs and families—many of them immigrants—in an effort to discover what their food legacies contribute in a larger realm.