Photo: Patrick McMullan
Only one woman has ever won Top Chef, and the gender imbalance this season is striking. But Padma Lakshmi believes it has everything to do with food and nothing to do with Y chromosomes. “Everyone who was eliminated deserved to be eliminated at the time they were, regardless of their gender. In some cases we don’t really know who made what until after we taste it,” she told as at a Fashion’s Night Out event at Bergdorf Goodman. But that doesn’t mean the judges don’t notice. “It’s a shame,” she added, “especially when one of the challenges was breaking them up by gender. It was very apparent.”
