.BravoTopChef host PadmaLakshmi took e_alexjung on a very personal food tour of New York City
Padma Lakshmi at Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights. Photo: Krista Schlueter for Vulture “I don’t expect you to love this,” Padma Lakshmi warns as she slides a red, plastic tray onto the Formica tabletop. “It’s fermented lemon pickles, so it’s a little bitter. It’s a really funky thing.”
We begin on a rain-slicked November day at the one-stop grocery store Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights, where she skims the aisles in chunky red boots and a leather jacket — a striking contrast to the neighborhood aunties doing their morning shopping — pausing to lecture on everything from neem-infused beauty products to the wall of leguminous plants to a produce aisle tumbling with snake gourds and green mangoes.
“We buy them in this size,” Lakshmi says, pointing to the large bottles of Maggi Hot & Sweet sauce. Photo: Krista Schlueter for Vulture From left: Lakshmi holds bunches of long beans; the Wagh Bakri masala chai she likes to get. Photo: Krista Schlueter for VulturePhoto: Krista Schlueter for Vulture From left: Lakshmi holds bunches of long beans; the Wagh Bakri masala chai she likes to get. Photo: Krista Schlueter for VulturePhoto: Krista Schluete...
As we drive along Grand Central Parkway to the temple, Lakshmi points out the rain-speckled window toward a pair of brown, LeFrak-style buildings in Elmhurst, where she lived as a little girl. She wants to take a detour. Lakshmi can still recite the address from memory, but the numbers have changed over the decades, so eventually, she gives the driver manual directions: left here, a right there.
Back in the car, Lakshmi turns on the seat warmers and instructs the driver to continue on. “It’s always funny to me when people think I’m so posh. I’m not saying I’m not now,” she says. “I’m totally a big, fat, comfortable lady! But I didn’t start that way. My poshness is totally self-built.” If there’s something that defines Lakshmi’s outlook, it’s been this ability to look at the darker corners of her past, but not stay in them.
Lakshmi returned to New York after her mother’s marriage with her stepfather dissolved; they eventually moved to Arcadia in the San Gabriel Valley, which she absolutely hated. She left as soon as she was able — back east to college at Clark University, and then to Spain her senior year, where she soon got work as a fit model through a friend. Within a couple of years, Lakshmi caught her big break: Helmut Newton, the provocative high-fashion photographer, wanted to take her picture.
“They’re to me as familiar as a PB&J to a normal kid who always has them,” Lakshmi says, tearing a dosa downstairs at the Hindu Temple in Flushing, Queens. Photo: Krista Schlueter for Vulture The crowd at the temple is deeply invested in Lakshmi in that familiar, immigrant way where religious centers double as gossip hot spots. A group of aunties clad in silk saris huddle in to ask for a photo with her; so do the workers in the kitchen and a newlywed, who tells her that she loved her book.
After her diagnosis, Lakshmi began to redefine her relationship with her body. Her forays into activism in the past decade — co-founding the Endometriosis Foundation of America and becoming an ACLU ambassador — have been part of that. Comedy has, too. She’s become a zippy presence on Twitter, livetweeting Top Chef and making fun of Stephen Miller’s hairline. In October, Lakshmi hosted a charity fundraiser at the Bell House in Brooklyn, packed with queer and female comics.
At Maharaja, the chaat restaurant, Lakshmi orders one of each item in a mix of English and Hindi. “My head bob will go away as we enter back into Manhattan,” she laughs.
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