Chef Tom Colicchio's high profile has only heightened thanks to his association with
Top Chef, yet how much do fans of the show really know about Colicchio and his rags-to-riches
rise to culinary glory?
Find out by exploring the untold truth of Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio.
While serving as a judge over the course of more than a dozen seasons of Top Chef, Tom
Colicchio has tasted a lot of food, and not all of it has been worth tasting.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Colicchio revealed what happened when something
he sampled was so vile that he literally couldn't keep it in his mouth, saying:
"There were only two dishes that I spit out [...] We were in the desert in Las Vegas,
and it was about 110 degrees.
We were served more-than-room-temperature raw fish.
It was pretty gross."
"I mean it's really… it's gross."
The other time he spat out a dish wasn't actually captured on camera.
He said:
"It was a clam, and it was kind of warm, as well, with lychee, and something about it
just made that gag reflex go off."
However, he insisted that the show's overall track record for amazing food has been pretty
near impeccable.
Colicchio may be a seasoned television veteran, but back in 1991 he was a rising superstar
chef who had never been in front of a TV camera when he was booked to do a cooking segment
on Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee.
As Colicchio recalled to Bon Appetit, he didn't realize he was supposed to attend a rehearsal.
This, he said, led to a producer telling him:
"You're going to mess this up, I can't believe this, I should just cut you right now."
When something didn't go as planned during the live show, host Regis Philbin joked:
"Well, that's what happens when you miss rehearsal."
Colicchio assumed that was a barb aimed at him, but soon realized Philbin had also missed
rehearsal, and was joking about himself.
The chef recalled:
"So we get through the segment and I get it done in time and it's just perfect.
The producer came over after the segment and she just said, 'Wow, that was really great.
Anytime you want to come by, just let us know.'
And I was like, 'I will never do TV again.'"
Colicchio and his wife, filmmaker Lori Silverbush, seriously considered calling off their wedding
when unforeseen circumstances intervened.
The wedding date had long been set, scheduled to take place on September 15, 2001 until
the deadly 9/11 terrorist attacks took place days before the nuptials were planned.
Ultimately, the couple decided to carry through with their plans, deciding love would triumph
over terror.
The couple exchanged vows in front of about 120 family members and friends in attendance,
while cancelled flights in the days after the attacks prevented 30 guests from making
it.
Colicchio addressed the timing of his nuptials in a 2017 tweet:
"My wife + I were married 4 days after 9/11.
Thought abt canceling but my wed ring was inscribed don't postpone joy."
Did you just get chills?
In addition to his multiple roles as chef, restaurateur, Top Chef judge and political
activist, in 2013, Colicchio added another entry to his résumé: movie producer.
The star served as executive producer for A Place at the Table, a probing documentary
directed by Silverbush.
The doc addresses a rather harsh statistic: 50 million Americans — and one in four children
— go hungry each day.
The film demonstrates workable solutions to solve this problem permanently, its official
synopsis declaring:
"A Place at the Table shows how the issue could be solved forever, once the American
public decides — as they have in the past — that ending hunger is in the best interests
of us all."
Speaking with Time, Colicchio revealed the most surprising thing he learned in the course
of making the film is that hunger is something that can be fixed.
He explained:
"It's not something like climate change or terrorism.
We can fix it and we've fixed it before."
"We produce more than enough food in this country to feed people.
People are hungry for political reasons."
Colicchio is not the type of celebrity who typically stirs up scandal in the tabloids,
yet in May 2019.
the Top Chef judge found himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit alleging that one of his
companies intentionally stole servers' tips.
Eater offered details of the lawsuit filed by a server who worked events at Colicchio's
Temple Court, a restaurant located within the Beekman Hotel.
The suit alleges that over a period of six years, tips meant for staff working at private
events at the restaurant were held by managers, and not distributed to the staff.
In addition, the suit claimed that clients hosting those events were charged $500 staffing
fees and a 23 percent administrative fee, which, the suit charged, should have been
distributed among staff.
Colicchio, however, disputed the allegations, saying that tips are not collected at these
events, and instead, staff is paid a rate of $25 per hour.
He told Eater the private event contract clearly states those fees aren't gratuities meant
to be given to event staff, but instead are applied to operating costs.
Said Colicchio:
"We believe that we operate above-board."
Colicchio is one of the founders of Food Policy Action, an organization devoted to pushing
for federal legislation to, quote, " provide healthy, affordable food for all."
He threw the weight of his celebrity behind the organization and its lofty goals — until
he wound up exiting it completely in 2018.
Colicchio announced his intention to part ways with Food Policy Action in an Instagram
post, admitting:
"It is with equal parts sadness and appreciation that I am announcing my resignation from the
board."
In an interview with The New York Times, Colicchio shed light on his decision to part ways with
the group.
Although he remained committed to the organization's mission, he didn't think what it was doing
had been particularly effective.
He said:
"I think lobbying efforts around food aren't going to work, and I'd rather spend my time
trying to change Congress instead of shouting into the void [...] I'd rather spend my time
getting better people elected."
Colicchio is an avid fisherman, whose love of angling was the focus of a feature in Men's
Journal.
Fishing, Colicchio told the magazine, was something he's done since he was a kid, though
his methods have changed a lot over the years.
As Colicchio told the Wall Street Journal, it was originally something he did with his
dad, a corrections officer who passed away when the chef was just 26.
He explained he was just 5 when he first started going out on the water with his father on
weekend fishing expeditions, saying:
"He wasn't a very good fisherman, so I probably learned patience on his boat.
He always had a fishing line in the water, but most of the time we were crabbing and
clamming."
Those trips with his father began his love of fishing — which eventually dovetailed
with his passion for cooking.
Colicchio's quest to bring fresh, local ingredients to his restaurants led him to become an advocate
for sustainable fishing.
It also resulted in his own YouTube fishing show Hooked Up with Tom Colicchio, which launched
in 2012 as a part of the Hooked Up Channel, and saw him go on fishing trips with celebrities
ranging from chef Eddie Huang to Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell.
In September 2019, Colicchio and his wife gave Wine Spectator a tour of their Brooklyn
brownstone.
One of the home's somewhat unique features is the backyard garden, where Colicchio grows
herbs and vegetables to use when preparing meals for his family.
In addition to serving as a source of fresh ingredients for his dishes, the backyard garden
also proved to be therapeutic to the celebrity chef, who told the magazine:
"I get up in the morning at six, I'm out in the garden for two hours and then my day starts,
and it's just a much better day.
It makes me so happy."
"You know, when the garden starts, and all this produce comes in, I have to do something
with it, and I can't eat it all on my own, so I usually enlist some friends."
Gardening, Colicchio explained, provides him with a constantly blooming reminder that there's
only so much about life that can actually be controlled, no matter how much we try to
convince ourselves otherwise.
He said of his herbs and vegetables:
"I don't know exactly what they're going to grow into.
You just have to let them grow."
Back in 2009, Colicchio was attending a fundraising event in Washington, D.C., when somebody began
asking in a panicked tone whether anyone knew the Heimlich maneuver.
"Oh my god!
The heimlich, the heimlich!"
Colicchio did, and he performed it on a party host who was choking on a piece of food that
had lodged in her throat.
Colicchio's efforts were successful, dislodging the potentially fatal food and saving the
woman's life.
That woman was Joan Nathan, an award-winning cookbook author, who wrote about her experience
being saved by Colicchio in a piece for The New York Times.
In a subsequent interview with Time, Colicchio confirmed his spur-of-the-moment heroism,
saying:
"It's true.
It all happened so quickly."
Colicchio had been in the midst of a conversation when he looked over and saw Nathan holding
her throat and two people next to her patting her back.
He walked over, asked if she could talk, and when she gestured that she couldn't, he performed
the maneuver that saved her life.
He explained:
"I had some training.
I was a lifeguard when I was 17 years old."
One of the weirdest facts to emerge from the annals of Top Chef involves weight changes
with two of the show's stars.
As host Padma Lakshmi told People, part of her duties on the show involve tasting the
contestants' dishes — which can be a lot of food.
During the 2008 season, set in Chicago, she wound up gaining 17 pounds.
She said:
"They wanna win.
They don't care about my waistline, so there's duck sausage and taleggio
and oozing burrata and ground meat, bacon, anything they can shove in there
to make it decadent and juicy!"
In a subsequent interview with People, Colicchio revealed that when he works on the show he
tends to actually lose weight.
He said of Lakshmi:
"She eats more than I do on the set because she does the quickfire challenges and the
eliminations and I only do the eliminations.
I actually tend to lose weight believe it or not."
Speaking with Eater Denver, Colicchio revealed some of the behind-the-scenes Top Chef facts
of which viewers may not be aware.
One of these is that judges, by design, are forbidden from having any contact with the
contestants until it's time for the judging.
He explained:
"They are not allowed to even say hello to us if we are off camera.
And there is someone with them at all times to make sure that that happens."
As a result, Colicchio and his fellow judges are unaware of what takes place with the preparation
of a dish until the finished product is placed in front of them.
He admitted all those aspects of the show are kept hidden from the judges in order to
allow them to be as impartial as possible when judging each dish, adding:
"A lot of the stuff you see from behind the scenes, we don't know.
I have no idea what is going on right now while they are shopping.
I don't know what is going on tonight when they go home.
We don't get that information.
We don't want it."
"I'll tell ya, I don't know what's going on at Found, but I'm about to get lost."
Colicchio's knowledge of cooking is unparalleled.
Given his vast experience, he shared what he believes to be the most common mistakes
that he sees people making in the kitchen.
"Sloppy.
Amateurish."
Cooking well, he explained in a video for Business Insider, is like anything else: the
more you work at it, the better you tend to become.
He said:
"It's much like learning to play a musical instrument.
You have to understand basics, you have to understand theory.
And then from there you can improvise."
The most common thing he sees people doing wrong is how they slice and dice.
He recommends that anyone trying to improve their abilities in the kitchen should, quote,
"work on your knife skills," adding:
"Getting comfortable with a knife is really important.
Not just for speed but for precision as well.
So I think, I think that's probably the most important thing."
Another big mistake he points to is sticking too closely to a recipe, which he sees as
more of a guideline.
According to Colicchio:
"It's just a starting off point and you can go from there [...] but I think if you really
want to become a better cook, you have to cook."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Mashed videos about your favorite stars are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.