- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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PSEG Foundation.

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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato, this is One-On-One.

That is Jacqui Tricarico.

Jacqui is, you know from watching One-On-One as a regular contributor.

This is one of the longest interviews that you've done.

It's a full show, isn't it, Jacqui?

- Yeah, I got the privilege of speaking with Padma Lakshmi, who is an executive director, an Emmy nominated producer, a food expert, a New York Times bestselling author.

We know her.

- She's famous.

- Well, yeah, but we've known her from "Top Chef", which she was on for many, many seasons, I think 19 altogether.

But she has this brand new cooking competition show coming out on March 4th.

It's called "America's Culinary Cup."

Different she says, than anything else we've seen before when it comes to food competition shows.

So we get to hear from Padma a little about her life and career and what led to this brand new venture of hers.

- So for people who've been writing and saying, we need more of Jacqui Tricarico, you're about to see Jacqui and Padma in an in-depth interview, and it's worth staying tuned for.

Check it out.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to One-on-One.

I'm so pleased to be joined now by Emmy nominated producer, television host, food expert, New York Times Bestselling Author, Padma Lakshmi, here to talk about her brand new cooking competition series called America's Culinary Cup.

It's so great to have you with us.

- Thank you.

It's nice to be here.

- Thank you for joining us and I can't wait to learn more about this brand new cooking competition series that you came up with and created.

But first I wanna talk a little bit more about your career and your journey that kind of led you to here.

We fell in love with you as the fair but tough critic on Bravo's Top Chef, 19 seasons.

You were there as hosts and executive producer, judge.

Talk us through a little bit about that time in your life, in your career and kind of how it led you to where you are today.

- I mean, so much has happened in that time and happened also in the television industry and specifically in that kind of competition programming and reality television.

You know, I am not somebody who watched a lot of reality television and so when I first took the job, I actually had another cookbook coming out, Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet.

And I just thought it would give my cookbook a little boost.

I had no idea, I don't think any of us did, that it would become this cultural behemoth that it's become.

And you know, the one thing that that show did for me is put me in very close direct contact with the world's best chefs.

And you know, I didn't grow up going to fancy restaurants.

I didn't know the names of chefs and you know, I'm not a chef, I'm a cookbook author, I'm a food writer and I don't wanna be, you know, my job as I see it in my writing is to teach people how to cook for their families when I'm not standing there with them in the kitchen.

And I got a lot of exposure to completely different kind of dining than what I do on my own time.

You know, I'm more likely to go on a street food crawl than I am to a fine dining tasting menu.

So it was wonderful to rub shoulders with all these culinary greats, to learn from them, to think about food differently and to develop my palette.

You know, I think a lot of my palette developed because I was fortunate enough to travel the world when I was young as a model after college.

And I had the opportunity to go to places that I would've never had the resources to do on my own otherwise.

And I think that really broadened my horizons.

And I also think when you're an immigrant and you're from one culture and you're living in another, you're already translating and doing, you know, you're always comparing and you're always learning two cultures side by side, one at home with your family, and then one at school or the world at large.

And so I was doing that anyway as I grew up, but then I got to do that again and again and again living in France, living in Italy, living in Spain, going on trips to different parts of Asia and Africa and things like that.

So I was primed to do that job, but I was still inexperienced in fine dining.

And you don't need to be a chef to be able to know when a dish is good or not.

And when I first started I had a lot of, you know, imposter syndrome because I wasn't a chef.

But then as I got comfortable and realized that actually I have a good palette, even if I've not worked in a restaurant, then I kind of relaxed about it, you know?

- Yeah, and so many of those experiences that you just described, traveling all around the world, being in different cultures, tasting so much different types of food, really led you to what happened after Top Chef, which is another show that we saw on Hulu called Taste the Nation.

You took what you saw around the world, but you said, wait, what's happening right here in America?

There's so much culture happening all around.

Talk about that series, that show and what prompted you to go on that journey?

- About 10 years ago, I started working with the American Civil Liberties Union regarding immigrant rights and women's rights as well, specifically reproductive rights too, I got an education through meeting a lot of different immigrants who had different stories that led them to the ACLU.

And after working with the ACLU for a few years, I wanted to find a project in my professional life, a creative project that would dovetail with my advocacy because, you know, it's fine to stand on your soap box and go to a rally or make speeches or write op-eds for the New York Times, but it's another thing to get people to listen to you because you're entertaining them, you know, and they're not aware of how much they're learning.

And at first, you know, Padmas All American, which is a book you have there, that was a book proposal that I did before Taste the Nation Ever Happened.

And I was interested, you know, in again creating something that used the knowledge of my advocacy, but also brought in my food knowledge.

Then I was concurrently developing a show about immigration with my producing partner, David Shadrach Smith.

And he looked at the proposal and he said, this is our show.

We should combine the two.

And so then I put the book project aside and we created Taste the Nation Together and filmed it.

And then I had to still go back and do the book 'cause I had signed this publishing contract.

And so the book you have there, you know, took seven or eight years to come out.

And five of those years were spent on the road about eight months of the year because I was still filming the other show.

So I was filming Taste the Nation and Top Chef and then I was, you know, I was very exhausted.

But when you travel across the country for that many miles and that many months, it really teaches you about who our neighbors are.

And so, in a way, I'm glad that it took me so long to do this book because I think it's a more informed book because of my experience on the road.

And you know, if you've watched Taste the Nation, you'll recognize many of the recipes in the communities from which they come in that book and that, you know, that still preys on my mind, I still work with the ACLU very closely.

I still think about immigrant rights every day of my life.

I think we all do now.

We can't get away from it.

And it's heartbreaking what's going on in our country, you know?

And so Taste the Nation was sort of my answer to people like Steve Bannon and Steven Miller.

And rather than wag my finger at them, rather than tell, I wanted to show through going to these communities and I'm very proud of Taste the Nation, and I don't think I would've been able to do this new show that's premiering on March 4th called America's Culinary Cup if I hadn't had the experience of creating Taste the Nation.

- And with that, you said you set out to find out who are Americans and what did you find that answer to be Padma for those watching?

- It wasn't who are Americans, but it's sort of, how inclusive is it?

What does it mean to be American?

And what it means to be American is to subscribe to a set of values of justice and freedom and equality, or as close to that as we can get for all.

And it has nothing to do with your last name or where your ancestors come from or the foods you eat, the qualities that have brought all those generations to this country.

Generations of immigrants are the same qualities that everybody aspires to, you know, taking care of our families, our elders, making sure our children get a good education, making sure we have a nice home, you know, to, to flourish and nourish our families and children.

And I don't think those are values that are particular to any one community, be they Peruvian American or Nigerian American.

I think those are very American values.

That's what the American dream is based on.

And I see immigration, I think our immigration system needs overhauling.

Nobody's arguing about that.

And I welcome that in a, you know, purposeful and nonpolitical way to just solve the problem and the mess that it is.

But I don't think immigration as a concept is something to be threatened or scared by.

It's actually the thing that has made America the superpower it is.

You know, all of these people coming from around the world, the best of the best coming here to make a life for themselves, but in turn contributing to the larger culture of America.

Not only the economy, but the music, the food, the pop culture, the sports, you know, take any sector of our society that you want and you can see direct evidence of how immigration has enriched that part of our society.

And so I think people, I think some people who consider themselves the real Americans, though they're not, unless you are Apache-- - Native American.

- Right.

Unless you're an Indigenous person, like you too are the descendant of an immigrant.

So what are we talking about here?

I think, you know, when you talk about that, it's usually people who are adjacent to also white nationalism and they feel a real deep sense of xenophobia because they're threatened because they don't, they don't wanna be a minority because they've lived in the culture that also doesn't treat minorities equally.

So they're afraid that if the rest of us, you know, if we all become beige rather than white or tan, you know, all this intermarriage and stuff in the next 50 years, they're afraid that they're going to be targeted or discriminated against as the dominant culture has a history of doing from way back, you know, even before enslavement in this country.

- Yeah, and when you're talking about that diversity that we see across America, you really are showcasing that so much in this beautiful book.

I mean, there's just such gorgeous photos.

Photos of the people that you met along the way.

Some of those personal essays about those folks that you met along the way and the recipes that they shared with you that you take and make it a little bit more tangible for the rest of us to kind of recreate in our own kitchens.

Talk about a few of those people, a few of those stories that really impacted you that you decided to include in the cookbook.

- I mean, that was sort of a revelation as I was traveling, you know, before Taste the Nation, I really didn't have much experience interviewing people, you know?

And so I had no idea how that would work, but I am a curious person and I genuinely want to know.

So that helped me out.

And I was just really touched by how open people were.

And I realized because nobody had asked them, you know, nobody had allowed them to tell their own stories how they saw fit.

And I'm the believer, and that's what I found out as I was gathering this information for the show and for the book, is that everybody has a compelling, interesting story.

You just have to be willing to listen.

You know, everybody has a fascinating life.

And I was very moved by how willing people were to tell me their origin stories or also a lot of the difficult things that they had been through.

You know, whether it was Hamid who's a restaurant owner in, you know, Westwood in California, in Los Angeles, about how he came here even before the Iranian revolution.

And now look what's happening again in Iran.

Or you know, an Indigenous woman who is a forager at the San Carlos reservation.

You know, a woman named Twila Cassidor.

And if you take that jacket off with the flag of the book, there's another cover in there.

And that's actually, a picture of me and Twila on the San Carlos reservation because if anyone's all American or a real American, it is Twila.

And that's why there's an essay about the day I spent with her in the desert.

If somebody had dropped me by helicopter into that desert, I would've starved within 24 hours.

- All of us would've.

- Yeah, but not her.

But because I was with her, she taught me how to forage for wild onions on the desert floor, how to jimmy the fruit off of barrel cactus, how to, I mean, I didn't catch the protein that, you know, we ate, it was desert pack rat, but she did.

But how to cook it, how to bake bread on embers of an open fire we were cooking on.

All of those things were so beautiful and at one with nature.

But she also shared some very painful things that happened to her that she didn't have to share at all.

You know, she'd gone through years of drug and alcohol abuse because of being sexually assaulted when she was five.

And she opened up about that.

And I felt a real communing, not only with nature, but with her.

And I think we need more of that.

I think we need to commune with our fellow Americans.

I mean, that's where community the word comes from.

And I think as much as the information age has brought the world to our doors and has made the world smaller, it's also made the world lonelier because we're looking at everybody through a screen rather than in person where we can see their eyes, where we can feel the energy in the room, where real connection can happen.

And that's what I was really moved by and I wanted to write about that.

And you know, at one point I thought maybe I would do two books.

I thought I would do a book of recipes and then a book of essays collecting all of my thoughts.

And then I just thought, I just gotta do one book right now.

- It was the right decision.

I loved kind of just reading through it, knowing where these recipes originated from and learning some of these stories and one of those stories you made sure to include is your own family story.

And even having your daughter be part of it.

I know she has a recipe in the cookbook as well.

How important was it to make sure that you included your own family story too?

- I mean, very important.

You know, it was important not only in the book, but in the show because everything I do is very personal and very domestic, right?

It involves the home and the hearth and the kitchen and stuff.

And I couldn't rightfully expose all of these other people and their families if I wasn't willing to do it with my own.

And you know, you can see how long the book took me, because you can see my daughter age in the book, you know, when she starts there, there's a picture of her, I think making dosas, it's this tiny picture with my grandma who's no longer here.

I think she was seven, just barely seven.

She had turned just seven.

Till now, I mean, she's already grown from the oldest picture there 'cause we shot those, you know, a year and a half ago in May.

And then with cookbooks taking so long with the production, you know, it came out in November of this year.

- And speaking of your daughter, I know becoming a mom, you weren't sure if that was going to happen for you.

I know something that you're really passionate about is spreading the word about a disease that you suffered from, endometriosis.

Tell us a little bit about what that is, because there's so many women silently suffering from this and how that really led to you creating the Endometriosis Foundation.

Endometriosis, sorry, Foundation of America.

- Thank you for asking.

I went through my own Health Odyssey and you know, from the time I was a young teenage girl, you know, 13, 14, I had really bad period cramps and all kinds of different pain.

And I was in bed for a week every month.

That's 25% of a woman's life.

And that happened for a good 23 years.

And you know, my mother's a nurse.

I have doctors in my family.

I've always been lucky enough to have health insurance.

I've lived in metropolitan areas like New York, London, Paris.

- Yeah, the greatest hospitals, the greatest doctors available.

- And yet I fell through the cracks.

And when I finally got the diagnosis that I needed, it was a revelation 'cause I thought, okay, I'm not crazy.

Like, you know, 'cause I thought maybe I'm sensitive.

What is it about me that makes me unable to handle the most basic part of being a woman?

And that's what happens to a lot of endometriosis patients.

What endometriosis is, it's a reproductive disorder where tissue resembling the endometrium or the lining of your uterus grows outside the uterus and the body's unable to expel it every month with your period.

It can't get rid of it.

And that's why you have such severe cramps because the spasms and the cramps is your uterus trying to expel that tissue.

And then over months and years of getting your period, it's like rings on a tree.

There's more and more layers that can't be expelled.

And so the patients don't get a proper diagnosis until a decade of suffering.

- It's just unbelievable.

And through the Foundation, you're just really working to get the word out there about this, making sure that women know to advocate for themselves and talk to their doctors if they are having these extremely painful periods and to know that this exists and they should really advocate for themselves, correct?

- Yes, I mean, we do a lot of advocacy, a lot of awareness.

We also give research grants.

We're opening a tissue bank.

We started a center, helped launch a center, I should say for gynopathology at MIT in conjunction with Harvard Medical School.

We have a teen education program and we like to go into science classes, not PE classes, which are often segregated or health classes because we, of course, it's a biological, like women's disease biologically.

But it is in our mind a family disease.

Because when a woman is down with constant chronic pain, everybody in her orbit, her family, her colleagues, her partner, her children, everybody suffers, right?

And so we want to educate boys and girls at the same time so that that young man or teenage boy when he grows up, he will be a better partner, a better father, a better colleague, a more aware man.

- It's a smart way to go about it.

Everyone should really understand what this is And so, Padma, talk to us about this newest show, how you came up with the concept for America's Culinary Cup.

What can we expect to see on March 4th when it premieres?

- I'm so excited for everyone to see it.

We've been hard at work.

It is about the highest principles of fine dining.

There's no tricks or gimmicks.

You know, you're not gonna see obstacles thrown in the chef's way.

It's really very similar to live action sports, you know, to Wimbledon or the Olympics.

And that's how I wanted it designed.

And there's a lot of sports on CBS, which is our network.

And so I wanted to pull in that audience.

But also I think, you know, there's a lot of similarities between cooking competition shows and sporting events because, you know, anything can happen.

It's live action, right?

They don't get to go and make that dish again.

There's knives, there's fire.

They're, you know, trying their best and food and its ingredients that it's made of is an organic thing.

So, you know, the souffle may not rise.

The pasta gets overcooked.

If the humidity is different in the kitchen, it, you know, throws everything off.

And so I wanted to create a show that encompassed all of the excitement and adrenaline of sports, but still was always conscious of the highest caliber cooking there's possible to be.

And I'm very glad that CBS was willing to give me a million dollar prize.

I wound up getting it sponsored.

You know, CBS has a great sponsorship department.

And so we had Dawn come in, which is great 'cause that's exactly, you know, just washing liquid is exactly what you see in a kitchen, but it doesn't have a format.

So it's not like you're gonna have a mystery box of ingredients every week, or there's going to be, you know, one little challenge or one big challenge.

No, it is governed by 10 principles or culinary commandments, everything that a chef needs to master in order to be considered a world renowned chef.

And when you're giving away a million dollars, it brings a lot of chefs outta the woodwork who would never consider competing on television.

You know, people think that just because a chef is well known that they're millionaires, but they're not.

It's manual labor.

And most restaurants, at least in the New Jersey, New York area, have not recovered fully from the pandemic.

And so this is also, in a way, my love letter to chefs and how hard they work and how creative they are.

You know, people don't realize how much being a chef is manual labor at the end of the day, and it requires stamina and yes, creativity and math and all that.

And so I wanted to showcase all that.

So each episode you will see our chefs being tested for one of those principles.

Whether they're mastering the art of meat, vegetable cookery, desserts, sustainability, innovation, consistency, all of those things.

And each episode is different.

In one episode, you may see two challenges.

In another episode, you may see a series of a bunch of little challenges.

Whatever we as producers could come up with to best test for that skill is how we designed any given episode.

- And a family friendly show.

My daughters and I love watching those types of shows, competition shows, food shows.

My daughters are obsessed, so I'm really looking forward to watching it with them as well.

March 4th it premieres on CBS and Paramount Plus?

- Yes, at 9:30, right after Survivor 50.

- Perfect.

- Yeah, I hope people love it.

I had a great time making it, I really did.

- Well, everything that you put out is really spectacular, so we can't wait to tune in and watch.

And thank you so much for taking the time today to speak with us here on One-on-One on PBS.

Thank you so much, Padma.

- My pleasure.

Nice to meet you, Jacqui.

- You too.

For Steve Adubato and myself, thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Rowan University.

PSEG Foundation.

New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

The North Ward Center.

And by NJ Transit.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by BestofNJ.com.

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