The Leftovers with Padma Lakshmi
Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle
Rachel Belle
4.8 • 730 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Padma Lakshmi, Emmy nominated TV host, executive producer, best-selling author and activist. Padma hosted Top Chef for 17 years and her brand new show, America’s Culinary Cup, recently premiered on CBS.
In this week’s lightning round, Padma talks about how she decides whether to eat the food fans bring her at meet-and-greet events; what she ate as a 16-year-old teenager in Los Angeles; what the ultimate New York City food is and her perfect birthday dessert.
Listen to the full episode of Your Last Meal with Padma Lakshmi here!
Become a Cascade PBS member and support public media!
Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle.
Sign up for Rachel’s (free!) biweekly Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings.
Follow along on Instagram.
Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to The Leftovers. I'm Rachel Bell. |
| 0:11.8 | The Leftovers is audio left on the cutting room floor from last week's Your Last Meal interview. |
| 0:17.3 | And today, you'll hear never-before-heard cuts from Padma Lakshmi, 16-time Emmy-nominated |
| 0:24.0 | TV host, executive producer, best-selling author, and activist. Padma hosted Top Chef for 17 years. |
| 0:32.1 | And her new show is called America's Culinary Cup. It premiered a couple weeks ago on CBS. |
| 0:38.1 | Last week on the show, Podma and I bonded over our shared love of eating in bed. |
| 0:43.6 | The bed picnic started because sometimes on Sunday I would arrive to Sunday, which is my only day where I really had off, like so tired. |
| 0:52.0 | And so I would go to the gym, come back, have a shower, put on some clean, crisp pajamas, |
| 0:57.0 | make a plate of little sandwiches and a big pot of tea. |
| 1:01.0 | And then put that on a tray and set it on my bed and just while away the time, spreading the New York Times, |
| 1:06.0 | the hard copy, the print copy, everywhere, and, you know, my stack of magazines and spend a beautiful cozy Sunday in. |
| 1:13.8 | Like that is like curious. |
| 1:16.6 | Yeah. |
| 1:17.1 | If you miss that episode, I recommend pausing this one and going back to listen to that one first. |
| 1:22.0 | But if you're all caught up, here's my lightning round with Padma Lakshmi. |
| 1:36.7 | Number one, what is your perfect birthday cake, or if you're not a cake person, perfect birthday dessert? |
| 1:38.4 | I love milifree, you know. |
| 1:41.4 | I'm not a big dessert person, so I love pound cake. Yes, me too. And I love |
| 1:48.3 | simple desserts like that. That would be what I would want. I would want no frosting and just a |
| 1:54.2 | pound cake. I'm the same. I always scrape the frosting off and then other people want to eat it. |
| 1:59.5 | Yeah, me too. You have eaten around the |
| 2:02.2 | world, you've had so many really special unique food experiences. Is there a cuisine or some kind |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Rachel Belle, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Rachel Belle and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.