Tom Colicchio has admitted that when he was offered the role on “Top Chef” 23 seasons ago, he wasn’t interested in joining the cooking competition show.
When the showrunners approached him, he had little interest in becoming a television star. Speaking to PEOPLE, the head judge opened up about how he quickly turned them down and what made him change his mind.
Now, Colicchio says he’s the “only one who has ever been in every single episode” of the hit series.
Why Tom Colicchio Turned Down ‘Top Chef’
BravoTom Colicchio told PEOPLE about the day he was approached to join a new show called “Top Chef”, and how he said no pretty quickly.
“I was like, ‘I am not interested in doing this at all,’” he says, although when the production team asked if they could film him, he accepted the offer.
“Two days later, they said, ‘Can you come up to LA for a screen test?’ I said, ‘I really don’t wanna do this show,’” he shares. He ended up sending them a documentary done on his restaurants.
“They called back and said they wanna make an offer, and so I was like, ‘All right, fine,’” he says.
Tom had been working in restaurants since the mid-80s, opening his first establishment in 1994. The Gramercy Tavern was voted Most Popular Restaurant in New York City in 2003 and 2005. In 2022 he opened up the first Craftsteak at the MGM in Las Vegas.
So Colicchio “was worried because, not only did he have a business to run that he wanted to represent, but he was a pretty known entity already.”
So what made him change his mind?
How Bobby Flay Inspired Tom Colicchio To Join ‘Top Chef’
GettyTom Colicchio said yes when he thought about Bobby Flay’s television access and saw how popular it had made the chef.
“I’d go to these food festivals, and it was book signing time, and I’d sit next to Bobby Flay. He would sign 200 copies of his book and I would sign 20 of mine,” he explained. “He was on TV. So I was like, ‘You know what? Let’s do this.’”
Flay has been a mainstay on TV since the 1990s and has rarely left the Food Network. His appearances include “Iron Chef”, “BBQ with Bobby Flay” and “B0y Meets Grill.”
Gail Simmons Was ‘Nervous’ To Join The Series
GettyIn that same interview, Gail Simmons told PEOPLE she was also not too inclined to join the judging panel of “Top Chef.”
When she was cast, she worked at Food & Wine magazine, who partnered with Bravo at the time.
“They said, ‘If we like one of your editors, we’ll put them on the judges panel,’” she recalled. “I was not enthusiastic about doing this. I had no idea what I was in for.” While she had media training and food knowledge, she had no experience working on a TV show.
“I had no idea how it would come across,” she admitted. “Tom and I talk about it all the time — we sat down for that first episode and our hearts were pounding.”
She added, “Our fear wasn’t that we would be a failure to the world. Our fear was that we’d be a failure to our industry. That we would be, you know, considered a joke.”
