Love, Loss, and What We Ate

A Memoir

By: Padma Lakshmi

Narrated by: Padma Lakshmi

A vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, Love, Loss, and What We Ate traces the arc of Padma Lakshmi’s unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera—a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and Nora Ephron’s Heartburn

Long before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television set, she learned that how we eat is an extension of how we love, how we comfort, how we forge a sense of home—and how we taste the world as we navigate our way through it. Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother’s kitchen in South India.

Poignant and surprising, Love, Loss, and What We Ate is Lakshmi’s extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges’ table of Top Chef and beyond. It chronicles the fierce devotion of the remarkable people who shaped her along the way, from her headstrong mother who flouted conservative Indian convention to make a life in New York, to her Brahmin grandfather—a brilliant engineer with an irrepressible sweet tooth—to the man seemingly wrong for her in every way who proved to be her truest ally. A memoir rich with sensual prose and punctuated with evocative recipes, it is alive with the scents, tastes, and textures of a life that spans complex geographies both internal and external.

Love, Loss, and What We Ate is an intimate and unexpected story of food and family—both the ones we are born to and the ones we create—and their enduring legacies.

An Unexpected Treasure!

This was such a lovely and unexpectedly warm, and grace - filled book. I'd always sensed there was more to Padma Lakshmi than a beautiful face, and a knack for food.

Great food memoir

Padma is surprisingly open about some of her most vulnerable moments, including divorce, her endometriosis, and ugly custody battle. But her discretions of food, especially her favorite Indian foods, are really what make this book great. Beautifully written, a great book for anyone who loves Top Chef or food.

Beautiful Voice & Story

Love the recipes described by the Author at the end of the book! A wonderfully described cultural narrative.

Top Chef of a story

I'm glad the author narrtorated the book. I'm also glad she decided to share her story. Especially wanting to just date. And her daughter is such a miracle.

I absolutely loved this book.

Beautiful story by a beautiful woman, with a lovely voice...I've always loved Top Chef but I feel a new appreciation and respect for Patma who seems to be just as beautiful on the inside as on the outside.