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The Washington Post published a column by Top Chef star Padma Lakshmi Wednesday excoriating its own humor columnist, Gene Weingarten, while also hinting he needed to be replaced by a writer of color.
In her piece, Lakshmi slammed Weingarten, as well as The Post, for a column published last week in which he highlighted his disdain for Indian food and erroneous claim that all of its dishes were based on curry.
"If you think Indian curries taste like something that could knock a vulture off a meat wagon, you do not like Indian food," Weingarten also wrote. "I don’t get it, as a culinary principle."
Lakshmi initially responded on social media, sharply criticizing Weingarten in multiple tweets for his need of "an education on spices, flavor, and taste…."
In her Wednesday piece she continued piling on Weingarten, suggesting that his disparaging Indian food wasn't funny, but "ugly."
"Gene Weingarten’s column headlined 'You can’t make me eat these foods,' … is unintentional anti-humor, regurgitating an unimaginative, racist joke with no punchline," Lakshmi wrote. "My issue is not his performative contrarianism (though it is tedious) or that the Indian cuisines he has tasted did not please him — but that his writing, besides being racist and lazy, is simply not funny."
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Lakshmi compared Weingarten's column to past insults concerning the "stinky" food of new immigrants to the U.S., giving examples like Italians and garlic, Irish and cabbage, Koreans with Kimchi, and South Asians with curry.
"It was never funny," she added, before claiming that it was also "not a good look" to be denigrating Indian food considering India was hit hard by the pandemic, as well as the "cultural reckoning with racist structures in the United States."
She took aim at the liberal paper itself, slamming it for even publishing Weingarten's column.
"I’ve seen similar drivel pass for good copy over the years. But again, this was published in The Washington Post this week, not muttered as a throwaway line at the Cleveland Chuckle Hut in 1982," Lakshmi wrote. "What’s puzzling is that editors and copy editors let his words through. Does The Post still have so little diversity among editors that this mini-screed raised no red flags? The paper issued a correction about the factual errors, but not the root of the issue: the bigotry."
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She added what seemed to be a hint for The Post to drop Weingarten in favor of a writer of color.
"I’m absolutely certain there are some young, hungry, comedy writers of color who would love a syndicated column in The Post. In fact, I’ll do an open call on my Twitter! I’m sure we can find someone," she wrote, before suggesting a Pakistani writer named Shireen Ahmed, who was one of the many critics blasting Weingarten on social media earlier this week.
Weingarten apologized on Twitter Monday after taking heat over the article, where he poked fun at his "unusually sophisticated palate."
The Post even added a correction to the top of the piece: "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."
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