Padma Lakshmi Dragged A Washington Post Columnist Who Dissed Indian Food
Gene Weingarten is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist. On Friday, the Post published 69-year-old Gene’s attempt at comedy, a piece entitled, “You Can’t Make Me Eat These Foods,” in which Gene writes about the kinds of food he simply won’t eat (“this is a matter of mature, informed discrimination, not childish biases”). These foods include balsamic vinegar, sweet pickles, anchovies, and Indian food. Like, all of Indian food. Gene writes that Indian food is “the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based on one spice” (curry) and he doesn’t get it “as a culinary principle.” Gene received a ton of blowback, including accusations of racism. And Indian-born Padma Lakshmi, food author and host of my beloved Top Chef, was one of them. She tweeted, “On behalf of 1.3 billion people, kindly f**k off.” The 1.3 billion people added, “Yep, what she said!”
Here is what Gene originally wrote in his column:
Indian food. The Indian subcontinent has vastly enriched the world, giving us chess, buttons, the mathematical concept of zero, shampoo, modern-day nonviolent political resistance, Chutes and Ladders, the Fibonacci sequence, rock candy, cataract surgery, cashmere, USB ports … and the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice. If you like Indian curries, yay, you like Indian food! If you think Indian curries taste like something that could knock a vulture off a meat wagon, you do not like Indian food. I don’t get it, as a culinary principle. It is as though the French passed a law requiring every dish to be slathered in smashed, pureed snails. (I’d personally have no problem with that, but you might, and I would sympathize.)
When people started coming for him, Gene tweeted (then deleted):
Took a lot of blowback for my dislike of Indian food in today’s column so tonight I went to Rasika, DC’s best Indian restaurant. Food was beautifully prepared yet still swimming with the herbs & spices I most despise. I take nothing back.
That’s when Padma entered the chat, replying to the now-deleted tweet:
On behalf of 1.3 billion people, kindly f**k off https://t.co/sXfHG1LeoC
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) August 23, 2021
And she continued:
You *clearly* need an education on spices, flavor, and taste….
I suggest starting with my book “The Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs”:https://t.co/DARIJ1olqf
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) August 23, 2021
Is this really the type of colonizer 'hot take' the @washingtonpost wants to publish in 2021- sardonically characterizing curry as "one spice" and that all of India's cuisine is based on it? pic.twitter.com/suneMRD8vs
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) August 23, 2021
A couple of hours later Gene, shaking in his lil’ boy boots, tweeted that he was trying to be self-deprecating:
From start to finish plus the illo, the column was about what a whining infantile ignorant d—head I am. I should have named a single Indian dish, not the whole cuisine, & I do see how that broad-brush was insulting. Apologies.(Also, yes, curries are spice blends, not spices.)
— Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) August 23, 2021
The Washington Post proceeded to edit Gene’s original piece and added the disclaimer:
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Indian cuisine is based on one spice, curry, and that Indian food is made up only of curries, types of stew. In fact, India’s vastly diverse cuisines use many spice blends and include many other types of dishes. The article has been corrected.
Edits softened Gene’s generalizations. The sentence “… and the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice” was switched to “… and curry.” And “If you like Indian curries, yay, you like Indian food!” became “If you like Indian curries, yay, you like one of India’s most popular class of dishes!”
Obviously, the comments on Padma’s tweets are all over the place. Replies include “Indian cuisine is literally too complicated for him to comprehend,” people agreeing that Gene is racist, and then, of course, a bunch of others defending Gene’s article as “satire” and he’s entitled to his opinion.
Padma reposted her tweets to Instagram, and in the caption, she wrote that the piece shouldn’t have been published in 2021. She says it is “racist and lazy at best” and regurgitates old colonizer tropes:
She also quoted journalist Shireen Ahmed’s tweet that wishes Gene a life of clumpy rice, dry roti, and soft papadams:
I pride myself on my Pakistani cooking. I also love South Indian, and fusion dishes. That you got paid to write this tripe, and boldly spew your racism is deplorable.
May your rice be clumpy, roti dry, your chilies unforgivable, your chai cold, and your papadams soft.— Shireen Ahmed- CanWNT Stan (@_shireenahmed_) August 23, 2021
WHOA. I totally agree that Gene’s column was a mess, but to pray that he encounters clumpy rice the rest of his life? That is serious business. I don’t even know if a life of clumpy rice is a life worth living!
Pic: Wenn.com