Padma Lakshmi's Reply To Writer Who Said Indian Food Based Entirely On 1 Spice

"It's racist and lazy at best," wrote Padma Lakshmi

The debate around curry refuses to simmer down. This time, it is an opinion piece in The Washington Post, written by humour columnist Gene Weingarten, that has sparked a heated discussion on social media, earned scathing criticism hundreds, including from Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, and forced the publication to issue a correction. The piece, titled "You can't make me eat these foods," focuses on several foods that Mr Weingarten refuses to eat, like hazelnuts and anchovies. The inclusion of Indian food in this list, and the reason that the writer gave for disliking it - that it is "the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice" - has enraged hundreds of desi Twitter users who accused the American writer of clubbing India's diverse cuisines into one distasteful opinion piece and not doing basic research before writing the article. .@geneweingarten thinks Indian food is terrible because it is entirely based on one spice. Which is basically the opposite of the truth. pic.twitter.com/sumaGpOBl4 You are a absolute idiot @geneweingarten. We even put 8 spices in our omelets. https://t.co/DD83aqkJZF This is even dumber than people saying they don't like Indian food because they don't like “curry.” ???? A curry is a masala, which is a *combination* of spices. There are tons of masalas. Which one? ????????‍♀️ Ah yes. That's why the masala dabba was invented: to hold that one spice in multiple containers. pic.twitter.com/tVPNjGfTed Trying to find that one spice that Indian food is based on pic.twitter.com/3dKEevNPTE 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. https://t.co/ZSR5SPcwMF Gene, nobody cares that you dislike Indian food. The issue is that you said the entire diverse cuisine was based on one spice. 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. I just want to know what the One Spice is It's one thing to not take to a certain cuisine. But to snidely claim that a country of 1.4 billion people and 2,000 ethnic groups could possibly all eat one thing? And then double down? I'm embarrassed vicariously. In the opinion piece published on August 19, Mr Weingarten wrote: "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," he continued. "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.)" Screenshots on the article, which has since been updated, surfaced on social media earlier this week. Indian-American author and TV personality Padma Lakshmi slammed the piece as "lazy and racist," in an Instagram post where she clarified that she did not have a problem with Mr Weingarten for not liking Indian food, but because he regurgitated "old colonizer tropes, gleefully reducing the culture and country of 1.3 billion people to a (frankly) weak punchline."