YEAR: 2010
As the head judge on Bravo’s Top Chef, Colicchio is often at pains when he has to tell an eager contestant that a dish is, well, not quite up to par. That’s because as a successful chef and restauranteur himself, he knows what cooking means to the aspiring chefs on the show, and because he understands how happy being in a kitchen can make you. His father, a corrections officer, recognized this joy in the young Colicchio, whose interest in food began with meals he put together at home, and suggested that his son become a chef. That fascination only grew as he cooked his way from his hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Gascony, France, in kitchen after kitchen, eschewing traditional culinary school for hands-on experience. After periods at some of New York’s most popular restaurants, including Gotham Bar and Grill, Quilted Giraffe and Mondrian, Colicchio and partner Danny Meyer opened Gramercy Tavern, where his cooking earned him the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: New York in 2000. It wasn’t until after he opened his own restaurant, Craft, where he focused on paring down food to its simplest, boldest flavors, that he was recognized with the Foundation’s Outstanding Chef Award. Even with hosting Top Chef, running his restaurant and penning cookbooks, Colicchio still feels the draw of the kitchen, and occasionally puts on an apron to create a multicourse meal for “Tom: Tuesday Dinner” in the private dining room of Craft. After all these years, food and cooking still make him happy.