Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi touts Kamala Harris' cooking passion in presidential endorsement
Kamala Harris’ skills in the kitchen have earned her the endorsement of a world-famous chef.
Padma Lakshmi, the host of "Taste the Nation" and a former "Top Chef" judge, laid out the qualities Harris’ well-known taste for cooking will bring to the presidency.
And she said the Democratic candidate’s passion for food and temperament behind a stove convinced the TV host Harris deserves to be in the White House.
“I would argue that the qualities she shows as a cook might say even more about her success as a leader,” the famous chef wrote in a New York Times column.
“What qualities make for a good cook? Which make for a good president? In a lot of cases, they overlap. Cooking well requires organization, attention to detail, patience — and the impulse to bring people together.
“In a divided country, these qualities can help Ms. Harris be a good, even a great, president.”
Lakshmi sees Harris’ cooking — a pastime she’s long put on display in conversation and in the YouTube channel “Cooking With Kamala” — as a way to connect with people.
“Talking about food is a way to relate to more Americans, even those uninterested in her politics. We’ve all been eating since we were babies, and we’re experts on our own tastes,” she wrote.
“Talking about food paves the way to harder conversations. Food removes barriers and unites us.”
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She went on, “As a host and a judge on “Top Chef,” I could see contestants’ characteristics and potential by watching them in the kitchen. One chef, for instance, always splattered food and left jars knocked over — he was frazzled and out of his depth, displaying a lack of leadership potential.
“If people are handling food carefully enough to elevate it, I know they’re thoughtful. If they panic under pressure when the clock is ticking, I know what they’re like in a crisis.”
Cooking is also a way that Harris throws aside stereotypical expectations of women, Lakshmi wrote, remembering Hillary Clinton saying, “I suppose I could have stayed at home, baked cookies,” as though cooking stood in the way of success.
But Harris' embrace of it shows her refusal to be pigeon-holed, and an eclectic understanding of culture, background and a focus “on nurturing and nourishing all Americans,” Lakshmi said.
She concluded, “Food relays the complexity of people’s stories. It tells the places they’ve lived, the people they’ve shared meals with. The foods we talk about and share define how we see ourselves as a country.
"In cooking, Ms. Harris displays the very qualities this country sorely needs — her care, and her ability to tell a new kind of story about what it means to be American.
"There is something very American, and expansive, about including many food traditions in one kitchen. Ms. Harris’s next cooking adventure, and all the traditions it will bring together, should be in the White House."