Along with most of the world, I know Padma Lakshmi from Top Chef, but didn’t know much about who she is outside of that world. This book was fascinating, and beautifully written. I love that all the memories she writes about are tied together with the foods she cooked and ate at the same time. She has very powerful sense memories associated with the most poignant moments of her life.

As someone who has been recently diagnosed with endometriosis after years of being told my pain was normal for some women, not unlike Ms. Lakshmi, I understand a lot of how she felt. I appreciated the honest discussion of her thought and grief processes, as well as of the treatments she endured.

I found it easy to connect with Ms. Lakshmi throughout the book, and really enjoyed hearing her story and her recipes.

Meh...

Don't get me wrong, I love Padma Lakshmi. I love her cookbooks and I love her on Top Chef. She's done some great things for women and five-star food, being able to sit at a table with Tom Colicchio and other male Michelin-star chefs and hold her own. However, this book is more of a memoir about how she was mistreated by the men in her life. From a relative who sexually abused her as a child to her (ex-)husband, Salman Rushdie who would become perturbed when she couldn't be at his side when he wanted her there because of her career, to Adam Dell who dragged her through a nasty custody battle over their daughter Krishna, she seems to cower in the shadows of these men.

I would have preferred she write more about her adventures in food, which were much more entertaining than listening to her rationalize some of her relationships. Instead, she mainly focuses on said relationships, leaving me wishing that this book was called Love, Assholes and What We Ate. I did, however, love reading about how her culture guided her taste buds in the early years of hosting Top Chef and how she decided to introduce her child to solid food. Definitely worth reading if you are a fan of hers, but if you are looking for a foodie book, you might want to skip it.

I’m not one to quit a book, but I couldn’t make it more than a quarter of the way through this. Believe the other reviews you see here; you will start this book with a generally favorable opinion of Padma Lakshmi, and either force your way through its entirety (or quit early) only to find her insufferably narcissistic and unaware of how charmed her life is. It’s also worth noting that either she or her editor appears to have used a thesaurus at random just to spice things up (no pun intended). Like most other readers or writers, I appreciate a juicy vocabulary, but you can shoot me dead before you ever hear me casually refer to green beans as hericot vert.

Love a good memoir for Audible. This one also has some juicy Top Chef secrets. Also as a teaser, Padma talks about how Salman Rushdie hit on her saying, "I've always been interested in Indian diaspora stories."

I’ve been trying to read more books by people and more specifically women of color and am truly loving the representation. Padma’s stories of her childhood and the food and family practices she grew up with were identical to mine (she’s from the same part of India my family is, so I guess it’s not that surprising). But her struggle with what beauty and success looks like, feeling unsure of where you fit in, being bullied at school for looking different or having a “weird name”, and wishing you looked different were so familiar with the experiences and feelings I’ve had and continue to struggle with. Well-written, honest, with food being the central focus, I loved this book. I also loved that it meandered and jumped around— it felt like how someone would tell a story. And as I keep telling myself with each book I read by a person of color: representation not only matters, but is essential.

Yes, she is a flawed person, but I enjoyed the conversational style and decent writing, and thought some of her insights and thoughts about womanhood and aging were worth the read. She's no literary genius, but there aren't many of those anyway. Would recommend.

What a life, already, and only in her early forties! Despite being a fan of "Top Chef," I was a little dubious about this, and was pleasantly surprised on any number of levels: Lakshmi's writing is quite good and the free form of her memoir is refreshing. Honesty, insight, and yummy recipes.