Tom Colicchio Quotes:
My chefs don’t apply for ‘Top Chef’. They all know that there is no way. At the end of the process I look at the resumes of the last 25 options just to make sure they’ve never worked for me before.
Tom Colicchio
Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key.
Tom Colicchio
Don’t touch my napkin. I do not want the server to pick up the napkin and put it on my lap. I know it belongs there; maybe I don’t choose to put it there.
Tom Colicchio
I hate okra and grated mountain yam for the same reason. They’re both slimy.
Tom Colicchio
There’s the issue of hunger, and there’s an issue of if you’re going to cut out food programs. We should be focusing on healthy food. Right now, fruits and vegetables are very expensive. So what can we do on the policy side to bring the cost of fruits and vegetables down?
Tom Colicchio
Buy the best you can find or afford and don’t over manipulate it. If I cook a scallop, the best praise you can give me is that it tastes like a scallop.
Tom Colicchio
I started cooking 30-something years ago. When I was 14, 15, I was a short-order cook in a snack bar. That was at a place called the Gran Centurions. It was an Italian-American swim club my parents belonged to.
Tom Colicchio
I have very good knife skills. I learned to butcher on my second job – I was 18 years old. Every other day we would break down six legs of veal.
Tom Colicchio
In New York, I’ll walk down the street and someone will say, ‘Nice show,’ and that’s it. If I’m at a food festival, it’s open season.
Tom Colicchio
You hit a certain age and – especially because of TV – the young cooks coming up say, ‘You’re a sellout, because you’re doing something other than what you should be doing.’ ‘Top Chef’ is a double-edged sword for me: There’s a whole group of people who will not come to the restaurants because they assume I’m not in them anymore, all I do is TV.
Tom Colicchio
As a chef, I had started working with groups like Share Our Strength and various local food banks in New York, raising money for hunger-related issues. And not only me, but the entire restaurant industry has been very focused on this issue.
Tom Colicchio
If I’m doing an event, if it’s a charity event, where it’s a walk-around event, where I gotta put a thousand small plates out in the course of a four-hour event, I gotta make sure I can do something that I know I can produce, that’s going to be consistent and good all night long.
Tom Colicchio
I don’t know too many parents that want to feed their kids soda, but high-fructose corn syrup is cheap. The price of soda in 20 years has gone down 40 percent while the price of whole foods, fruits and vegetables, has gone up 40 percent and obesity goes up right along that curve.
Tom Colicchio
I call all chefs ‘cooks.’ They’re all cooks. That’s what we do, we cook. You’re a chef when you’re running a kitchen.
Tom Colicchio
Most cooks try to learn by making dishes. Doesn’t mean you can cook. It means you can make that dish. When you can cook is when you can go to a farmers market, buy a bunch of stuff, then go home and make something without looking at a recipe. Now you’re cooking.
Tom Colicchio
Every chef should have an understanding of pastries or desserts.
Tom Colicchio
Men with shaved heads are always better. Just ask my wife.
Tom Colicchio
In an ideal world for me, school lunch would be free for everybody.
Tom Colicchio
This is what people don’t understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty. It’s not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It’s because kids – and this is the problem with school lunch right now – are getting sugar, fat, empty calories – lots of calories – but no nutrition.
Tom Colicchio
My feeling is, if you’re going to be called a celebrity, you might as well use it for some good. It’s better to testify for school lunches in front of Congress than get drunk in a bar somewhere and misbehave.
Tom Colicchio
One of the first jobs I ever had was opening clams in a seafood restaurant, so I’m pretty quick at it.
Tom Colicchio
Many of them have accomplished a lot before they ever get to ‘Top Chef’ although they’re not well known. The show just provides them with a platform. There’s just one winner and on some seasons you can get numerous chefs that are really good. Even if they don’t win, they’re all talented.
Tom Colicchio