I am not giving this book 2 stars because it was a bad book, instead I am giving it 2 stars because I didn’t connect with the book. I enjoyed the parts of the book where Parma talked about her love of food, and the important moments food had in her life. Those parts are where I felt she was the most authentic, the rest of the book, while all her life, just felt more like she was explaining her decisions instead of just telling the readers about her life.

Listening to this on 1.25 is an absolute must. Otherwise, a little repetitive but definitely interesting and made me pumped for the next Top Chef season to drop!

For my Advanced Reporting class on Food and Culture, we read four profiles on Padma Lakshmi. I was attracted to just her cool attitude and wanted to know more of her story from her own words, they all mentioned her memoir so I thought I’d give it a go.

I don’t know if it was because I’d read so much about her by the time I came to her book, but I’ll admit I was a bit desperate to finish by the end.

Nevertheless, I do think Padma is a very skilled writer, especially great when it comes to food. I admired her raw vulnerability — she doesn’t hesitate to say how felt at any given moment in time. She lays out her side of the story with pure honesty, while still showing immense respect for anyone involved. She also doesn’t shy away from her personal mistakes and shortcomings. I think her writing was strongest towards the end when alluding to Teddy, her daughter, and of course, all throughout with food.

Still, I did find the structure of the book odd. Throughout the first half of the book she goes back and forth in time narrating her life. I think it was somewhat confusing at times, she’d go in really long reminiscing tangents that I would just forget what she was initially talking about…. I also don’t think I agree with her decision to open the book explaining her marriage and divorce to
Salman Rushdie. I can see why she would want to get that out of the way, but I think it took away from her story in the end.

Regardless, Padma is so courageous in telling her story in such a vulnerable way. After I finished reading, I scrolled through the reviews under it and was absolutely stunned by how many people responded with so many comments loaded with misogyny… What’s so wrong about a woman being ambitious???

Was this book perfect? No, but I loved every second I got to spend in Lakshmi's company. I was a big fan of Top Chef several years ago, though admittedly we dropped the show for probably logistical reasons I can't remember. Padma writes the way she talks, and I could hear her voice clearly throughout. She tells stories the way you would talk to a friend - it's not always linear, and sometimes you digress and have to come back to your main point after you got distracted for ten minutes, but you're still glad to be in that friend's company and to hear what's going on in their life.

It seems from some reviews that a big draw of this was to get the dirt on Lakshmi and Salman Rushdie's divorce, to which - look, I like celebrity gossip as well as the next person, but that's not the kind of gossip I prefer. I don't find glee in other peoples' pain, and the way she talked about the relationship and divorce - oof. RAW. I was ready to make a judgment about her having an affair with a married man (as Rushdie was not yet divorced from his third wife when he and Padma got together), but the way she writes, I decided right then and there, in one of the early chapters, this was worthy of five stars. I wrote in one of my status updates that she doesn't seem to care whether or not one agrees with her choices, and I stand by that. There's a lot here, and she doesn't hide the hard things. And there are a LOT of hard things - the crippling endometriosis that went undiagnosed for so long, having a foot in two countries and never feeling quite "home," the divorce and attempted reconciliation, the fear of infertility followed by an unexpected "geriatric" miracle pregnancy, the legal situation regarding her daughter's birth father and custody, the rapid decline in her lover's health as he learned he had brain cancer... it's a lot. She writes about it all beautifully.

Little disappointed in this book. I like kitchen memoirs generally, but this one paled in comparison to other books I have read in this genre. The food described was not to my taste. The events chronicled in Padma's story were interesting but not compelling.

I really enjoyed this book - her story is pretty incredible, and I feel like I am watching Top Chef with a very different perspective of her. I appreciated how honest and upfront she was with some pretty painful experiences. The book felt like a stream of consciousness at times which got a little frustrating but that's my only real critique. This is a great read!

Surprisingly enjoyable (wow does Salman Rushdie come off like a dick) and engrossing; made me want to be friends with Padma based on the Helmut Newton nude shoot anecdote alone. Perfect vacation read.

Don't bother with this.

Not a fan of how this book jumped around in regards to timeline and the quick subject changes. I also found myself disliking the author the further I read.