A quick word ...with Padma Lakshmi

The beautiful Padma Lakshmi. Photo / Supplied

The new season of Top Chef starts tonight. On the show Lakshmi is a serene and friendly presence, not to mention quite the beauty. However, like head judge Tom Colicchio, she can also be harsh and honest in her appraisals of the budding top chefs' offerings ... .

You've been a foodie right from when you were little - is that right?
When I was four years old I was eating bowls of chillies. I would climb up like a monkey and go after them because I wanted to taste everything in the kitchen. All the action in our house was always in the kitchen, where all the secrets, gossip and decisions were made. I was born in India, moved to America when I was very young and I grew up in New York City, and my mother introduced my young palate to lots of different food.

I have an incredibly sensitive palate and it's why I'm a good cook. It's not something I honed through years of practise - it was just something I was born with.

It's the sixth season of Top Chef so how do you go about making every series unique?
I guess going to different cities each time is part of it? Every city we go to influences what you see on the show, from a very straight-forward agricultural point of view, like Miami was about citrus, seafood, and Caribbean influences. But then Chicago was deep-dish pizza.

And the sign of a good chef, or any artist, is to be influenced by their surroundings. So the scale of Vegas, with everything being so much bigger and bolder, will come through.

It seems as though this season some of the contestants are already well known and at the top of their game.
Oh yeah, you will see as the season goes on that these chefs are very successful already. They are not coming on to be discovered, they are very well known in their own part of the universe. Kevin from Atlanta, who is still quite young, already owns his restaurant. So many of these people are established but that's what makes the competition this season so interesting, because now we have really avid loyal fans from New York, to the Netherlands, and New Zealand, it's really nice to be able to take the game to a new level.

How is it working with Tom and why are you a good pairing?
Tom is great because he runs a chain of restaurants, worked himself up, he's not classically trained, and neither am I for that matter, but he's coming at it from a chef's point of view. Even though Tom is really harsh he's never mean and he always tries to be constructive.

He also does very beautiful rustic but high-end hearty food. I think I come at it from a point of view that I'm a writer of food, and do in-depth documentaries on food from different countries. And, to be honest, if I chopped an onion you would not be that impressed but I can go toe to toe with anyone with my palate.

What makes Top Chef unique?
Because it's got a lot of competition these days.It's the most successful food show in the world - we're in 20 countries now - because it's a very high-brow show.

Of course there is the reality part where people are locked into an environment together, with people who are fighting and missing home or whatever, but really the chefs are the stars of the show and it's about the food. And at the end of the day, even if you're not a chef or interested in cooking, everyone in the world eats and so we all have very ingrained opinions about food. And I think we treat food and the preparation of it with great respect and you learn [from the show] something about the food that you put into your body.

And I know Top Chef is all about the food but the red dress you wear in the first episode is stunning.
Oh, the beaded red dress. My girlfriend Alison Temperely, who is an English designer, gave me that dress, and it's an old, old dress that I've had for eight or nine years. I love it, and I've kept it and thought I'd wear it on the first show because it's a bit Vegas, you know?

Top Chef season six starts at 8.30pm, Thursday, TV3.