The Strange Hotel Request Padma Lakshmi Made While Filming Top Chef

Padma Lakshmi is best known for her role as host of the infamous cooking show Top Chef, but if you take a look at her Bravo profile, you'll find that she also has quite a background in the food industry; the chef touts impressive titles including "Emmy-nominated food expert, television host, producer and The New York Times best-selling author." 

While working on a cooking show, you get to sample your fair share of intriguing and delicious dishes. On top of that, Lakshmi travels all the time for work, so it would be safe to assume that she has a taste for takeout or enjoys fine dining at restaurants while she's out and about, right?

Maybe not. In a podcast interview with Deadline, the chef revealed some things you may not know about her, including what she tends to do while traveling during filming and staying at hotels. Her request is pretty odd and may even surprise the biggest fan.

It seems that due to all of her traveling and exotic eating, or perhaps in spite of it, Lakshmi tends to ask hotel staff for hot plates, pots, and pans while she's a guest. Weird, right? She also spoke with Food & Wine about her hotel dos and don'ts, which make her feel more comfortable on the road. In the article, Lakshmi describes her plight in the makeshift kitchen.

Lakshmi arms herself with everything she needs to make a dish her own, including a "toolkit of spices, like black mustard seeds, some spice blends, sumac, and za'atar, Aleppo chili, and Urfa," as well as fresh kaffir lime leaves and curry leaves. Don't forget, Lakshmi is traveling with kids, so she doesn't want them eating a hotel's room service for weeks on end. Besides, as Lakshmi notes, eating out should be "something special," not an everyday expectation.

Honestly, when you explain it like that, it doesn't seem all that weird. And who knew you could request those kinds of things from a hotel? Hmm, maybe we should all be trying that next time we stay somewhere for a longer amount of time.