Padma Lakshmi: Thai Green Curry

Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle

Rachel Belle

Arts, Food

4.8 • 730 Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2026

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After leaving Top Chef after a 17-year run as Emmy-nominated host and executive producer, Padma Lakshmi vowed to never host another food competition show again. She created and hosted Taste the Nation, an exploration of American food through the lens of immigrant and indigenous communities, continued to write cookbooks (Padma’s All American is her latest) and do activist work for the ACLU and UN.

But last week, her new culinary competition show America’s Culinary Cup premiered on CBS! Why did she break her vow? You’ll have to listen to find out!

Padma and host Rachel Belle talk about the joy of eating in bed; her favorite midnight snacks to eat with her teenage daughter, Krishna; and what valuable lessons her grandmother taught her about life, through the lens of cooking.

Then New York Times food reporter Priya Krishna joins the show to talk about the negative impact ICE detainments and raids are having on American restaurants. The folks she interviewed say it’s harder on restaurants than the pandemic was.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rachel Bell, and this is your last meal.
0:12.4	The show where celebrities share stories about the foods they love most, and we dig into the history, culture, or science of those meals with experts from around the world.
0:21.6	Today on the program, Podma Lakshmi, Emmy-nominated TV host and producer, best-selling author, and activist.
0:29.9	Padma hosted Top Chef for 17 years.
0:33.2	She's the host and executive producer of Taste the Nation, and her brand new show that she created
0:38.7	from the ground up, premiered last week on CBS.
0:41.9	It's called America's Culinary Cup.
0:44.6	After leaving Top Chef, Padma vowed to never host another culinary competition show ever again.
0:51.1	She tells me why she changed her mind.
0:53.6	And we talk a lot about eating in bed,
0:56.7	something I love to do, something Podma loves to do, and something you, the listeners,
1:01.5	have very strong feelings about. Then New York Times food reporter Priya Krishna joins the show
1:07.2	to talk about how American restaurants are being deeply affected by ice.
1:12.3	That's coming up later in the show.
1:14.5	But right now, let's hop into my conversation with Padma Lakshmi.
1:24.1	Hello.
1:25.1	Hello.
1:25.7	I was going to ask you if you were in bed, but I can really tell that you're not.
1:30.0	Did you must have watched the Daily Show? No, I didn't. I heard you on a podcast where I think you were in bed with the host.
1:39.7	Oh, Liz Plank, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you were saying that they like, put different pillows on your bed to make it look like you were maybe on the couch.
1:47.9	But I wasn't.
1:48.8	Yeah, definitely.
	...

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