Padma Lakshmi's All American
Emmy-nominated host Padma Lakshmi reflects on seven years of travel for Taste the Nation, exploring how food serves as a lens for immigrant communities and American identity.
Why we picked this
Taste the Nation treated food as a lens on immigration and belonging—not celebrity travel TV but genuine ethnographic work across communities that rarely get serious attention.
Seven years of Taste the Nation took Padma Lakshmi to Somali restaurants in Columbus, Tejano barbecue pits in Texas, Korean-Mexican fusion in LA, and dozens of other places where American food tells a story about immigration, displacement, and the stubborn persistence of culture. The Hulu series earned her an Emmy nomination not for glamour but for treating these communities as subjects worth understanding.
Lakshmi is also a UN Goodwill Ambassador, the author of multiple cookbooks, and co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America. Her new cookbook Padma’s All American extends the project of the series into a document of the country as she found it. Ticket purchase includes a copy of the book.
She’s in conversation with James Beard Award-winning food and culture writer Ahmed Ali Akbar, as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Lakeview festival day at the Athenaeum Center.