Padma Lakshmi’s latest project was born from a particular strain of frustration. “I was tired of certain people getting to decide who an American was and what American food is,” she said in a recent interview. “All my life in food, I’ve heard [the term] ‘New American cuisine.’ What the hell is that? I just wanted to go and find out.”

The result of that journey is Taste the Nation, a 10-episode Hulu series in which Lakshmi reverse-engineers the melting pot theory, looking at the food on America’s table and figuring out how it really got there. Each episode centers a “hero dish”—piping-hot dosas, fresh poke, crispy fry bread—often produced by a bustling immigrant community, such as the Indian community in Queens, New York, or the Mexican community in El Paso, Texas. The show also focuses on the country’s indigenous people, highlighting the Navajo in Phoenix, Arizona—though it’s not, by any means, an exhaustive view. “I didn’t have time in season one to explore the various tribes and their differences, because they’re significant,” Lakshmi noted. “A Shinnecock Indian in the northeast is going to have a different diet and a different lifestyle than a Navajo individual in Arizona.”

Lakshmi, who immigrated to the United States from India when she was four years old, conceived of the show while serving as an ambassador for immigrant issues for the American Civil Liberties Union. At events she would tell her own story again and again—a repetition that became tiresome. “I got sick of talking about myself,” she said bluntly.

Taste the Nation was envisioned as a docuseries about immigration. But since Lakshmi’s métier is food, she decided to use that to explore not just immigration, but also American history and the sticky line between assimilation and survival. One episode revolves around Thai women in Las Vegas who married white American soldiers, while another traces how Germans living in Milwaukee during World War II were quick to bury their heritage—though their cuisine is now a bedrock of the city’s food culture. Much of the series traces how war and colonization shaped dishes that have come to be iconic.

Taste the Nation isn’t just educational—it’s visually arresting, clean and straightforward with sweeping nature shots. (Lakshmi likened it to a “big, beautiful tourism commercial.”) Each episode is guided by Lakshmi’s frank, authoritative narration. These elements may lead some viewers to instinctually compare the show to Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations or Parts Unknown—but Bourdain’s work and Lakshmi’s are vastly different in their approach and aesthetic. (Lakshmi does share a commonality with Ugly Delicious’s David Chang, however, in that they both asked the comedian Ali Wong to make a guest appearance as a food expert.)

Ultimately, her quest is heavily laced with optimism, with Lakshmi highlighting flourishing American communities that have managed to keep their traditions intact. (An episode about the Gullah Geechee people in South Carolina does this best.)

“I really wanted to get granular because I was and am still convinced that if we can connect on a human level, on the ground level of our daily lives, we will realize that we have a lot of the same values and goals,” she said. “The humanity of a Persian guy who made kebabs in his restaurants was no less than the humanity of [Donald] Trump’s grandfather, you know?” Friedrich Trump, the president’s grandfather, emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1885, and was formally banished from returning to his home country in 1905 after dodging military service.

Though the show hands its mic over to various restaurateurs and culinarians, Lakshmi also turns its gaze inward. In an episode about Queens, the New Yorker brings the camera into her home (replete with a gorgeous, massive kitchen), interviewing her mother, Vijaya, and her 10-year-old daughter, Krishna, who adorably debates her preference for American pancakes over traditional Indian dosas.

“I purposely never had her on Top Chef,” Lakshmi said of her daughter. The plan was to keep her off Taste the Nation as well—but that move ultimately felt hypocritical, as so much of the show features families letting Lakshmi into their homes and telling their personal stories. “With what face could I ask these people to let me into their homes, to sit and break bread with them, to ask them these really intimate questions about their family and their struggles and their fears, without being able to open my own self up? I would have found that really shitty.”

Like many parents across the world, Lakshmi has been spending more time than ever with her daughter amid the coronavirus quarantine. The pandemic has had a particularly dire effect on the restaurant industry, which had infamously precarious profit margins even before COVID-19 hit.

“A lot of these big businesses will get back on their feet because eating out is a big part of our socialization as a culture,” Lakshmi theorized, imagining the post-COVID restaurant industry. (Case in point: Even amid the virus, patrons are already clamoring to eat at spots that have opened outdoor seating.)

“In urban markets where people are upwardly mobile and still want that experience, that demand will be met with the supply of the fittest. I think takeout will increase,” she continued. “People will realize they don’t need the real estate that they used to have, and they’ll streamline it. They’ll just be, like, mobile restaurants, which will mainly be kitchen staff, you know? I think it’ll change the way we look at food.”

Lakshmi, who is on the leadership committee for the James Beard Foundation’s Industry Relief Fund, has raised money for restaurants in need through the Open for Good initiative, which helps struggling spots keep the lights on. She’s also personally donated to restaurants featured in the show, which would have gotten a boost after Taste the Nation’s release—had the country been operating under normal circumstances. Until that day comes, Lakshmi hopes the show will be a source of solace for viewers, offering a vicarious way to satiate their wanderlust: “I hope there’s an added layer of comfort and understanding that the show provides at this time when we so sorely need it.”

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