Padma Lakshmi left Bravo’s Top Chef in 2023 after 19 seasons of hosting and executive producing. She said she was “burnt out,” and later confessed to feeling the food competition show format “had gotten stale.” Three years later and Padma is returning to hosting and exec producing duties, just on a new show and network. America’s Culinary Cup premieres tonight at 9:30pm ET on CBS/Paramount+ (boo), and boasts the largest cash prize ever on a food competition show: $1 million! (In my head I’m saying that Dr. Evil style.) So Padma was on The Daily Show recently to promote her new gig, where she fabulously took JD Vance to task for cooking garbage meals for his wife Usha, who is vegetarian:
“Top Chef” alum Padma Lakshmi says JD Vance’s politics are far from the only gripe she has with the vice president.
Calling out his questionable kitchen habits while appearing on “The Daily Show” last Tuesday, the model-turned-foodie told host Desi Lydic: “There are so many reasons to hate JD Vance, I didn’t think we needed a culinary one, but it’s so bad.”
She was referring to an unsavory recipe Vance admitted to making his wife Usha Vance during a February Fox News interview: a sloppy concoction consisting of veggies, ranch dressing and pre-made crescent rolls that the VP himself called “disgusting” and “inedible.”
Horrified, Lakshmi told Lydic, “He’s married an Indian woman, so she comes from this very deep vast culinary tradition, you know, and he’s giving her, what was it, ranch dressing?”
“Who bakes ranch dressing?” the celebrated cookbook author said aghast. “Also, he’s like, ‘She’s a vegetarian. She only eats bread, vegetables and dairy.’ You’ve been married to this person for over a decade, right? And we eat lots of things, right? Rice, lentils, beans, squash, all this stuff.”
“But, I mean, maybe he knows what she likes because she doesn’t really have good taste,” she then shrugged.
Lakshmi, whose new chef showdown “America’s Culinary Cup” premieres on March 4, is far from the first one to shudder at Vance’s peculiar taste in food.
During President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, the Republican earned some serious side-eye for repeatedly mentioning his love for Diet Mountain Dew — yes, diet.
I’m always here for a takedown of JD Vance — he should’ve been banished to the ratty couch of forgotten history long ago. But let’s please take a moment to acknowledge and applaud the masterful way Padma slipped in a dig at Usha Vance in this appearance: “But, I mean, maybe he knows what she likes because she doesn’t really have good taste.” BOOM! Perfect, no notes. It insults Usha and JD in one fell swoop, all under the guise of a compliment! (That JD knows his wife well, sure.) As for the “dish” in question — veggies, ranch dressing, and pre-made crescent rolls — I don’t know if anything has ever screamed frat boy cooking for himself away from home for the first time more than that assemblage of ingredients. That’s practically an episode of Chopped on Food Network! At the end of the day, though, the biggest shocker to me in this story… is that JD cooks at all. As for Diet Mountain Dew, ew. There’s a bottle of regular Mountain Dew that lives in the office kitchen at my work; it’s been there for months and never loses its shocking neon/radioactive hue, and the only time I’ve seen it imbibed is from one colleague who’ll take a sip anytime she’s sick but has to plow through a pile of work. Thank you for joining me on this detour down Mountain Dew Lane.
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