Inside Padma Lakshmi’s Next Culinary Chapter

For decades, food writer and TV host Padma Lakshmi has helped define how America understands food. After 17 years judging Bravo’s Top Chef, she’s back with an entirely new cooking competition format, one she designed herself. America’s Culinary Cup strips away many familiar gimmicks — obstacles, surprise sabotages, and contrived drama — for something simpler: a celebration of cooking, ingredients, and techniques.

The series, which premieres on CBS on March 4 , pits chefs from across the U.S. against each other for a $1 million prize, the largest in cooking competition history. But the best part of the show is how it reflects Lakshmi’s philosophies, that the most exciting flavors can come from anywhere. After all, immigrants continue to shape what Americans eat, from tacos and kroeung to xiaobing and dosa.

As Lakshmi writes in her recently released cookbook, Padma’s All American, food has always been the perfect “Trojan horse.” She chatted with The Juggernaut about everything from her biggest no-no in a cooking competition and her relationship with her daughter Krishna to why food television still has room to evolve.

We edited the interview below for clarity and length.