Pack your knives and get ready for a brand-new cooking competition as CBS serves up “America’s Culinary Cup.” Premiering Wednesday, the series marks a return to the genre for creator, executive producer and host Padma Lakshmi.
“Making this kind of show is very difficult. Any kind of food show is always a labor of love, but I found hosting to be just a walk in the park, really. I had hand-picked who I thought was the best in the business for each department and also for my co-judges. It was just so pleasurable to be on set. I think that also comes with learning what not to do and what to do,” she told TheWrap. “I’m not new at this. I’ve been doing it for a long time and hopefully I’ve learned a lot of things, so I tried to create an environment on set that I had always wanted.”
Lakshmi is well-known for her 19-season tenure as host of “Top Chef” on Bravo followed by two seasons of docuseries “Taste the Nation” on Hulu, earning 16 Emmy nominations across both in the process. However, it was CBS Entertainment president Amy Reisenbach who convinced Lakshmi to return to reality TV.
“I did feel very burnt out and ready to be done. I was working on my book and had a break and was working on some other creative pursuits,” Lakshmi recalled. “But then CBS came to me, and they had been asking since I left, whether I was interested in this and I just wasn’t at the time. Then after taking a year and a half off and thinking about it, I got together with the head of CBS again and heard everything she had to say, and she made a pretty convincing argument for making a show of this kind. She was very supportive of all of my requests about how I wanted the show to be and really treated me like a filmmaker, like an auteur.”
“After creating ‘Taste the Nation,’ I really didn’t want to go back to being just talent again. I found everything I did off-camera to be very interesting and engrossing. I always want to challenge myself creatively and intellectually, if I can, in my work. We all have bills to pay, but I was really tempted by Amy Reisenbach,” she added. “When you create a show from the ground up, exactly as you want it, the good news and the bad news is that you have no one to blame but yourself. But the good news is also that it made me much more relaxed because I knew what was going to happen. It just was a pleasure to be at work.”
Lakshmi also serves as a judge on “America’s Culinary Cup” alongside celebrity chefs Michael Cimarusti and Wylie Dufresne — and one of the contestants is even two-time “Top Chef” winner Buddha Lo.
“I met with a lot of different, highest-caliber chefs who are very lauded in our industry. And I found that, out of all the people — it wasn’t just my decision, it was also CBS and my producing partner and a whole bunch of producers; this is not a one-woman show — I thought they had the best chemistry with each other and with me,” the EP shared. “We were sort of laughing, saying that we were a culinary throuple, but the truth is, they were having a bromance and then I was invited into that once in a while, because I had other stuff to do besides just eat the food and judge it. It was a joy and pleasure to work with these two chefs who I have admired and respected for a really long time.”
“I also wanted faces that people might have known, but weren’t just people who went on every other culinary show all the time,” Lakshmi continued. “Most of all, my first order of business was to find two judges who the chefs competing would admire and want to hear from. I needed for whomever walked through those elevator doors to be a chef who instilled respect and admiration and even a bit of fear.”
But the former “Taste the Nation” host also said she indeed misses the docuseries format and would happily return for seconds: “I really miss the documentary series. It took three times as long to film as these kind of competition shows do. And again, because I was the creator of that show, I took it all the way to the end: I was at every color correction, I was at every sound mixing session, I wrote my own voiceover, I had to give four or five cuts to the network for each episode and was very involved in that. It was a labor of love. If anybody wanted to do a 2.0 version of ‘Taste the Nation,’ I would jump at the opportunity.”
Until Paramount+ gets on that, what can fans expect from the first helping of “America’s Culinary Cup”?
“It’s the biggest prize in culinary history. The nearest one is half that amount,” Lakshmi proudly noted. “And then also, we don’t have a format. Most every competition show has a format: You always know there’s going to be a next level that you’ve survived to, or there’s going to be a mystery box of ingredients or whatever. Ours doesn’t have a format at all. It basically designs every episode based on what’s best or how it’s best to test for a particular culinary commandment or principle of fine dining.”
“I would love to see ‘Italy’s Culinary Cup’ and ‘Australia’s Culinary Cup’ and ‘China’s Culinary Cup,’ all of those things. Nothing would make me happier,” she concluded. “I hope in 10 years, we’re having a ‘World Culinary Cup’ with all the different countries.”
“America’s Culinary Cup” premieres Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and streams the next day on Paramount+.
