I really liked Padma from my years of watching Top Chef, so when I saw that she wrote a memoir, I totally wanted to read it. I learned a lot of stuff about her I didn't know, and she spilled enough tea to keep my inner-gossip hound happy. I really enjoyed her little tidbits about India and her Indian culture, but her "my life is so hard" shtick definitely got old.

Less a food memoir and more a cleaned-up response to tabloid rumors about her love life. Like her favorite Indian snacks, initially tasty but ultimately unsatisfying.

As a closeted foodie one of my favorite shows is Top Chef. I was always intrigued, by Padama Lakshmi: a coco-colored beauty who is articulate and icy, with a highly educated palate. Thus, I was captivated by her memoir. Padma is whip smart. Her book covers her high profile romances with older men (Salman Rushdie & Teddy Frostman), growing up in India, her ethnic identity struggles, her modeling career, having endometriosis, filming Top Chef, her undying love for her little girl, and food. Her el...

Padma Lakshmi may be a pretty face, but she is no fool. She opens this memoir with the dirt everyone was hoping for: intimate details of her failed marriage to Salman Rushdie, the infamous and brilliant writer. It was a torrid affair, start to finish, but wonderfully these are not even the most interesting chapters of Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir. Lakshmi's story is that of an immigrant child, shuttling between India and New York or LA. It is a story of single motherhood and matriarchy....

I hate most autobiographies. People tend to try to make their lives sound extraordinary, while remaining humble, and deserving. They gloss over the juicy bits, the stuff we really want to know, and try really hard to justify their shitty behavior. This book is exactly like that.I am not a hater. I love Top Chef. Padma has always struck me as a beautiful woman and an adequate host. A bit bland, a bit whiny, perhaps. In this memoir, Padma is just that. Bland and whiny, dare I say vapid and boring?...

For someone who always seemed to convey a serene and low-key spirit—at least while on TV—Padma has certainly led a life of high drama. From her struggle to fit in and assimilate as a young immigrant from India to her tumultuous relationship and marriage with Salman Rushdie, and everything that happened afterwards, her life has definitely been a roller coaster ride. But I also have to add that I’ve read many celebrity memoirs and it never fails to surprise me how fast they lose touch with reality...

This book was filled with nostalgia of many kinds for me - the by-lanes of my childhood, the feelings that come from trying to straddle different worlds because of living in different countries, TamBrahm traditions and most importantly - thayir saadam. While I felt that Padma tries to hard to be poetic about food in some places, I also felt that this was a very honest take on her life. She calls herself out on many things including daddy issues, a sense of entitlement and more. She also takes th...

I admired Padma Lakshmi from afar until I read her memoir. It's hard not to be struck by her beauty and well-spoken grace on television. On Top Chef I liked the delicate yet discerning way she tasted the competitors' morsels. I liked that she married Salman Rushdie, a man of substance. I know a whole lot more after reading her words and I'll never look at her with such naive admiration again.She is just too full of herself. She doesn't seem to appreciate or understand how privileged she is. When...

I enjoyed this. Admittedly, I walked into this with a fairly low opinion of Lakshmi -- I had assumed her to be vapid, self-absorbed, and attracted to little more than money and power. And she is! But I guess I was surprised to the degree that she owns it. She doesn't come off well in all situations, and she cops to a lot of it. That's not easy. She's kind of a jerk, she thinks she's brilliant and beautiful -- more than she likely is, I'm guessing, but who cares? She at least offers a portrait of...

Sorry. Boring. Boring. Poorly written. Boring.

Considering the fact that I tend to avoid non-fiction, this was surprisingly easy to get through (well, it is a glorified celebrity memoir, I admit;-). I was intrigued because I had watched the first two seasons of Top Chef and was always a little confused why they would have a model, whom I found rather uncharismatic, hosting a food show. In this book, Laskshmi does succeed in hitting you over the head with her absolute love for food and I believe her, so there's that. Unfortunately, I didn't l...

This is an interesting memoir because it is so full of yearning and I always appreciate when a writer can lay their desires bare. The narrative certainly meanders, but that isn't a bad thing. There is an interesting lack of structure in how Lakshmi shares her life, from her childhood here in the United States and in India, to her adulthood, her modeling career, marriage to Salman Rushdie, hosting Top Chef and eventually becoming a mother. The writing is particularly strong when she writes of her...

Prior to reading this book, the only experience I had of Padma was through Top Chef, and on tv she seemed very pleasant and actually down to earth and quite likable. Boy did my perspective change by the end of this work! This is quite literally the only memoir I've ever read where I went into the book generally liking the person and by the end flat out hating them. Somehow Padma wrote a memoir where she actually comes off as extremely unlikable. I found her to be a narcissistic, gold-digging whi...

I've had this on my Kindle for years, and I think I thought she'd be shallow or full of herself so I didn't crack it open. Instead I found Padma Lakshmi to be refreshingly open, honest, and direct about her relationships, health issues, career, and her love for food. She starts in 2007 when she moves out of the home she shared with Salman Rushdie, then goes back in time before catching us up to the almost present.

I needed a cookbook for my Summer Book Bingo card and there may not be a style of book that I would want to read less, so! I picked this one up and it has eight recipes in it and I AM COUNTING IT, DON'T CARE. If you are wondering if she talks shit about Salman Rushdie: YUP. He comes off like an Indian Frasier Crane. Tell me that this surprises you in the least.

It was an enjoyable read until about half way through and then it became very messy and unedited. The author couldn't seem to get to the point. I would have never pictured her to be the self pity type. I'm still a fan and will continue to follow her career and maybe buy another book from her, but this book should have been edited a bit better.

This is a book about Padma Lakshmi's life and struggles which went with it. It is very moving for the large part as she writes about the attitude of a few insensitive men she gets into relationships with. These sections which deal with her personal trauma do make you feel for what she has been through, dealing at the same time with endometriosis. It is not easy making it as a model in the west when you are an expat, but she persists and finally makes it. The book is interspersed with a few recip...

This book is one giant humblebrag. "I never got my bachelor's degree because I was too busy modelling in Europe." "A famous writer fell in love with me even though he was married." "Then a billionaire who used to date Princess Diana fell in love with me even though I was married." "I didn't really know anything about food but I wrote two cookbooks anyway."

I am Indian and I love food so by proxy I assumed I would love Padma. I knew of her and without getting too close, I thought she was pretty admirable. So I picked up this book and now I have nothing but mixed feelings. At times, I identify with her and enjoy her anecdotes. But the thing that really got to me during the course of this book was the self pity. She understates the grandiosity of the life she has and she writes herself to be a victim of sorts. And the undertones of the writing feel l...

Just a so-so for me..... I liked Padma's writing about her food memories and her childhood very much, and the nosy person in me enjoyed some of the recent relationship stuff. But there was a lot of 'poor me' stuff that I found a little bit whiny. I found the structure was a little bit all over the place, without it feeling purposeful for some reason. When a memoir is told in a non-linear way (this went back and forth at times), I still feel there needs to be a progression of theme to make sense