PADMA Lakshmi is back on a new show just three years after her shocking exit from Top Chef.

Since she left the cooking show in 2023, Padma has given fans a few reasons why she left Top Chef after 17 years as host.

Key art for "America's Culinary Cup" featuring a woman in a yellow dress with a blurred background of a kitchen.
The host is cooking up a brand new competition show, airing tonight on CBSCredit: Refer to source

Sam Bompas and Padma Lakshmi standing in a kitchen with various molds and jellies.
Padma hosted Top Chef for 17 years
Padma will host the brand-new cooking competition show America’s Culinary Cup, which premieres on March 4.

But before her new venture, the chef was a fixture on Top Chef, which premiered in 2006.

Padma announced she would be leaving the show ahead of the Season 20 finale in June 2023.

“After 17 years, many of the cast and crew are like family to me, and I will miss working alongside them dearly,” the host said at the time.

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“I feel it’s time to move and need to make space for Taste The Nation, my books, and other creative pursuits.”

Taste the Nation, Padma’s documentary show, aired for two seasons in 2020 and 2023 but was not renewed following her Top Chef exit.

A month after the announcement, Padma told Variety that her busy schedule left her no time for a personal life.

“I was on location for eight months out of the year,” she said.

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“I was in pre- and post-production for both of my shows. And I was looking at edits of one show while on the set of another show. It was just exhausting and untenable for me to continue that way.”

“I haven’t had a relationship in a long time, either, because I’m always working,” Padma continued.

“I don’t know when I think I was going to meet anybody. I’m surrounded by people I either employ or employ me, and neither of those are appropriate [for a relationship].”

Padma added that she wants to spend more time with her daughter, Krishna, now 16, who she shares with ex Adam Dell.

“In five years, she’s going to go off and have her own life and hopefully go to college and stuff,” she explained.

“It wasn’t an easy decision.”

The nature of the job was also a factor for Padma.

She told Harper’s Bazaar in 2024 that “it was really taking a toll on me physically to digest that much food in a day.”

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Padma will return to the small screen with America’s Culinary Cup on CBS, which features “sixteen of the country’s most elite chefs competing in the ultimate culinary arena”

Chefs Michael Cimarusti and Wylie Dufresne will serve as judges for a $1m prize.

Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio smiling at a dining table during Top Chef Season 20.
The chef and model has also released a cookbook

Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio sitting at a judges' table.
After a three year break from TV, she made the decision to host another cooking show