‘Top
Chef” fans had to wait a little longer than usual for the new season, which starts tonight on Bravo.
But the delay was in service of a higher cause: Co-host Padma Lakshmi’s baby girl.
“We were supposed to shoot the show in January,” Lakshmi said yesterday.
“I was going to be eight months pregnant. There was no way I could do it,” she said, the sound of hair dryers whirring around her as she prepared to appear on George Lopez’s late-night talk show in LA.
So Bravo pushed the filming of Season 7 — the first set in Washington, DC — as long as they could, which turned out to be six weeks after Lakshmi gave birth.
When it came time to shoot, she says, “We all were like this big caravan of gypsies who moved from New York to DC and set up camp there. I had my mom there, I had the baby and the nanny.” (The cookbook author, formerly married to writer Salman Rushdie, still will not disclose the name of the baby’s father, though reportedly it is Adam Dell.)
Though DC is hardly famous as a culinary mecca, Lakshmi says the city presents plenty to start with — like crab cakes from Maryland, the bounty of Virginia farms, and Ethiopian food.
“Even I didn’t know that outside of Ethiopia, DC has the largest Ethiopian population anywhere in the world,” she says.
Naturally, the show also takes advantage of the city’s biggest crop — politicos.
“We always have some luminaries,” says Lakshmi, who was excited to work with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, White House executive assistant chef Sam Kass and CIA director Leon Panetta as guest judges on the show.
This season, too, the show added Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert to the permanent judging panel.
Nearby embassies opened their doors to the chefs to showcase international cuisines.
Dismissed by critics early on as just a pretty face when she was introduced in the second season of “Top Chef,” Lakshmi has proven herself a substantial co-host and judge, as knowledgeable about food as she is beautiful.
“As a model, your success really depends mostly on how you look,” she says. “But it’s really because this is the genetic roll of the dice I got.”
Giving birth is beginning to chip away at Lakshmi ‘s ambitions, she admits. “My perspective has shifted, and I’m not as hungry anymore because my priorities have changed.” Not as hungry — literally?
“Oh, no,” she corrects herself. “I’m literally hungry. I’m more hungry than ever.
“It’s really hard when you’re trying to lose the baby weight and you’re eating all day long on the set.”