Priya Krishna, a former star of Bon Appétit's Test Kitchen series of cooking videos, left the popular show in early August, citing an underlying issue of inequality at the Condé Nast-owned production.
"A number of my colleagues and I found out that there are extreme disparities between what certain groups of people were being paid and what other groups were being paid," she told Cheddar. "So, essentially we asked leadership to close that gap, to the very least pay us what our white colleagues were being paid, to give us the same number of appearances that they were being promised, to give us some sort of guarantee that they were interested in investing in us as talent."
Krishna said that the contract that Condé Nast offered didn't contain those commitments, leading to a back-and-forth negotiation that ended without an acceptable agreement for many of the people on staff. The unsatisfactory response led to the departure of multiple Bon Appétit video personalities, including Krishna.
"I didn't want to be told to be grateful for scraps when I knew what my colleagues were making," she explained.
The food writer and cookbook author also alleged that during her time at Bon Appétit she was tokenized as an expert on Indian cuisine (something she emphasized she was not). For example, she was asked to participate in videos starring the channel's white hosts when they were making Indian dishes.
"It just felt as though a lot of the people of color were not allowed to be multidimensional characters in this video space whereas our white colleagues could cook whatever they want, do whatever they want, flit between different worlds and cuisines," Krishna added.
She went on to describe how BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) cooks across the food media industry, not just at Condé Nast Entertainment, are often limited to producing dishes from their particular heritages.
Stepping outside of this box, Krishna said her cookbook, Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family, explores the cuisine of her childhood, which doesn't fit neatly into a single category.
"I wanted to show people that the food that I grew up with, which is this hybridized cuisine that's rooted in Indian flavors but draws inspiration from across the country and across the world, was just as American as your hot dogs, as your roast chicken," she said. "I want us to sort of expand the definition of what American food means."
