Perhaps an unpopular opinion - I read Padma Lakshmi’s response before I read the column, and it gave me a very different (strong) opinion of what had transpired. WTF WaPo?! Who is writing / editing / publishing straight out racist nonsense in this day and age in a mainstream publication with no hesitation or shame?!
Then I read the column. It’s a humor column. The point of it is ridicule and insulting a whole range of lauded foods and making fun of himself for not eating things that are well and widely acknowledged as delicious. It is self-mocking as his own food idiocy / illiteracy.
“Bleu cheese. Rhymes with eeuuu cheese.”
“Balsamic vinegar. Okay, you take some perfectly good vinegar and infuse it with perfumes that make it smell like the anteroom of a 19th-century San Francisco bordello.”
Reading the article dissolved my “outrage” - now I’m going with the thought that this was a good PR stunt for Padma Lakshmi. She got me too, until I read the piece. I’m willing to bet that most people who responded and reacted did not actually read the column itself or know the context.
My best friend and college roommate “hates Indian food.” She has eaten - and loved - Indian food in my home and at restaurants with me. But she still, vehemently, insists that she “hates Indian food - except anything you make or I’ve eaten with you or your family.”
I decided she ate something she didn’t like as a kid and that extended to everything under the umbrella. We make fun of her for it, but we never pick an Indian restaurant when she is along - even if I’m going to do all the ordering. But yes, I cook Indian food for her and so does my family, lol.
