Tom Colicchio on "Why I Cook"

When you find yourself at the farmer's market next to a guy with strong opinions about fennel and scallions, you listen. That's especially true if the guy is Tom Colicchio, who for more than 20 seasons has been a judge on one of America's biggest food shows, "Top Chef," while also working as one of America's most successful restaurateurs.

Many of his celebrated dishes have started at a local greenmarket in New York City's Union Square, but lately the meals he enjoys the most are even more local than these ingredients. "I cook very simply at home," he said. "It's not the food part of it. I enjoy the half an hour, 45 minutes that we're sitting together as a family."

Now 62, married and a father of three, Colicchio is sharing the story of his many lives in the kitchen in a new book, "Why I Cook" (Artisan).

So, why does he cook? "Partly it was something that I found at a very young age that I was good at," he said. "It came very easy."

Thomas Patrick Colicchio grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, sharing a bedroom with two brothers, and big boisterous family meals in a working-class Italian neighborhood. While mom ran the family kitchen, it was dad, a gambler-turned-corrections officer, who helped turn Tom into a chef. "Having ADHD, I struggled with recipes; I'd get frustrated by recipes," Colicchio said. "But I loved cooking. And my dad wasn't the kind of dad who sat down and had these long conversations with you about your future. But he came home with these books – I had no idea what 'La Technique' was doing in a county jail library, but there it was!"

Yes, Jacques Pepin's "La Technique" is what helped Colicchio understand the fundamentals of cooking. "Once I understood that, I could look at a recipe and go, 'Oh, they want me to roast something here. I know how to roast something. So, I don't need a recipe anymore,'" he said. "Or I can braise something. But now when I braise it, well, I can change the flavor profile by adding different things into that braise."

The kitchen, however, was where Colicchio learned how to be himself, a place where in the chaos of orders and ingredients, he found a calling.

His career took off fast, from flipping burgers at a local snack bar, to building whole menus at a North New Jersey hot spot, and ultimately to New York City, where – not yet 30 – he earned his first three-star review from The New York Times, at Mondrian.

Colicchio doesn't credit his family for his entrepreneurial spirit: "I think it came from the fact that I worked in kitchens and worked in restaurants that I didn't like. And I didn't want to have a boss."

But even as he soared professionally – becoming executive chef at New York's celebrated Gramercy Tavern - Colicchio's private life was cruising toward rock-bottom. "I was doing drugs when I was cooking the whole time," he said. "Had a bad night and ended up in Harlem somewhere, you know, with another cook getting a bunch of drugs and, you know, getting high all night. I woke up in my bed … my shirt was covered in blood. I don't remember getting home, which kind of scared me, 'cause I was driving a motorcycle. So, somehow I made it home. But that was it. I woke up and said, 'That's it. No more.'"

He quit the drugs, but his working-class roots still led to some awkward moments in the Frenchified, fancy world of fine dining. "I knew I could hold my own, but I just still felt like I was a fish out of water here," he said. "Now I'm in New York. You know, you get three stars, now all of a sudden you're getting pulled in a lot of different directions. Was there a certain amount of impostor syndrome? Absolutely."

He said he tried saying no to "Top Chef" ("Didn't really love food TV"), but then he had the experience of attending a food festival: "Come time to sign books, and I'm sitting next to Bobby Flay, and he's signing 300 and I'm signing 20. I didn't think it was because he had a better book. He was on TV. It was like, 'All right, let me do this TV thing.'"

Looking back now, in his new book, Colicchio traces the arc of a changing industry, where sexism and even abuse has been replaced by something a little kinder, and a lot more welcoming. "There's still voices being raised," he said. "It's a little different than it used to be, but there's still, you know, in the middle of service there were times you got to be forceful. But you can be sure it's not personal. What's really missing is a lot of the misogyny that I saw."

But for Tom Colicchio, after all these years, the one thing that hasn't changed is the one thing that also keeps him in the kitchen: "Looking back on it, food has the power to bring people around a table. And to this day, I love doing dinner parties, love having people over. That's another reason why I cook."

Recipe: Tom Colicchio's Skirt Steak

Recipe: Possibly the Best Grilled Cheese You'll Ever Have, by Tom Colicchio

For more info:

• "Why I Cook" by Tom Colicchio (Artisan), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
• Crafted Hospitality (Tom Colicchio Restaurants)
• "Top Chef" on Bravo

      
Story produced by Julie Kracov. Editor: George Pozderec.