Tom Colicchio (Courtesy Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Thomas Patrick "Tom" Colicchio (; born August 15, 1962) is an American celebrity chef. He co-founded the Gramercy Tavern in New York City, and formerly served as a co-owner and as the executive chef. He is also the founder of Craft and Colicchio & Sons restaurants. Colicchio is the recipient of five James Beard Foundation Medals for cooking accomplishments.

He has been the head judge on every season of the Bravo reality TV show Top Chef. Colicchio has been a featured chef on Great Chefs Television.

Life and career

Colicchio was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He is Italian-American on both parents' sides. He has been married to filmmaker Lori Silverbush since 2001. He has three sons, Dante (1993) from a previous relationship, and Luka Bodhi (2009) and Mateo Lev (2011) with current wife Lori.

In July 1994, Colicchio and his partner Danny Meyer opened the Gramercy Tavern in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan. It was voted Most Popular Restaurant in New York City by the Zagat Survey in 2003 and 2005. He sold his interest in 2006 and is no longer affiliated with the restaurant.

In spring 2001, he opened the first Craft restaurant one block south of Gramercy Tavern. A year later, he opened the first Craftsteak at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. In 2003, he began the first 'wichcraft', his sandwich shop. In 2010, he opened Colicchio & Sons, and also Riverpark.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Colicchio joined volunteers serving food to rescue workers at Ground Zero.

On January 19, 2009, at a U.S. presidential inaugural event in Washington D.C. Colicchio performed the Heimlich maneuver on award-winning cookbook author Joan Nathan, who was choking on a piece of chicken.

Colicchio served as the main consulting producer on Bravo's Top Chef spin-off series entitled Top Chef Masters.

Colicchio won the 2010 Outstanding Chef award from the James Beard Foundation. He also won an Emmy award in 2010 for Outstanding Reality-Competition Programming as an executive producer of Top Chef, on which he also appears.

Colicchio appeared in the fifth episode of the first season of HBO's Treme as himself along with fellow chefs Eric Ripert, David Chang and Wylie Dufresne. He made another cameo in Season 2 alongside Ripert.

In 2011, he made cameos in the Season 23 premiere episode of The Simpsons, "The Falcon and the D'ohman," and The Smurf.

He has written three cookbooks.

Restaurants

Craft

• New York City
• Los Angeles
• Dallas

Craftbar

• New York City
• Los Angeles

Colicchio & Sons (formerly Craftsteak)

• New York City

'wichcraft

• New York City
• Las Vegas
• San Francisco

Craftsteak

• Ledyard, Connecticut
• Las Vegas

Voysey's (consultant)

• Kiawah Island, South Carolina

Riverpark

• New York

Books

• Think Like a Chef
• Craft of Cooking: Notes and Recipes from a Restaurant Kitchen
• 'wichcraft: Craft a sandwich into a meal"and a meal into a sandwich
• Top Chef: The Cookbook

Eat Drink or Die

On August 20, 2008, Colicchio partnered with Or Die Networks' eatdrinkordie.com, a site dedicated to hosting entertaining, instructional food videos made by experts and users alike.

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