493: Tom Colicchio on the Birth of Gramercy Tavern, Top Chef Favorites, Running For Congress

24:10I said, Thomas, do you remember? I was having dinner with him. And I said, do you remember how I left Raquel? He said, yeah. I said, I'm writing this memoir and I'm going to talk about it. I hope you're okay with that. And he said, sure. And I said, I'll just send you the chapter. And I did. And he said, that's exactly what happened. And that's fine. I'm okay with it. It's your book. Yeah. I mean, it's a great chapter. and it really shows how Thomas Keller failed in New York for reasons that are pretty common today, real estate. Real estate is the biggest problem. Well, that and the fact that his partner, Serge Raul, who just passed away, who's a great guy who had Raul's, he wanted a different kind of restaurant.

24:45Serge was the money behind it. It was Raquel, Serge Raul and Thomas Keller. And Serge wanted more of a fun club and the bar was that. And then there was a serious restaurant and the two just didn't work. but that said we were doing brilliant brilliant food there and there was no doubt in my mind that he was going to go on and just be a massive success in fact my biggest regret in life was that when he opened French Laundry I was going to invest and I didn't I didn't have the money to but at the time my significant other did and she decided not to the Tom Chateau would have been built on that money I mean I wasn't going to invest a lot of money it would have been nice It would have been nice to say, hey, I'm his partner.

25:31Yeah, I know. And like Raquel is one of those great filled restaurants that really has this mythology around it. This restaurant that really showed the potential of this chef. I want to now get into this is like probably my favorite section of the book. And this is what I think many listeners know you as, which is the founding of Gramercy Tavern in New York City. I love this moment where you and Danny Meyer, your partner, your future partner, actually, go on a trip to Italy. You don't know each other. This is a bit of like a plan. It's like a date, essentially. You're dating at that point because you want to make sure you vibe.

26:04And like. It was like a third date. Third date. Okay. You had probably gone out around to some places in New York. We had talked. I mean, so Danny and I met each other in 1991. Actually, probably before that. So when I was at Mondrian, Danny had come into the restaurant. And in 1991, I received Food & Wine Magazine's Best New Chef, along with Michael Armando, who was the chef at Human Square Cafe, and eight other chefs. It was 10 every year. And so I met Danny and spent some time with him there. And then the following year I went back, so it's 1992, I knew Mondrian was closing. Danny had come to the restaurant a bunch.

26:38And so I, you know, I'm sitting next to him at a lunch or something. And I said, hey, when I get back to New York, I want to talk to you about something. I said, all right. I didn't want, I didn't know, I didn't want to get out there. So that's why I didn't tell him there. And so I got home, I called him and I said, listen, Mondrian's closing. And, you know, he said, well, why are you telling me? I said, well, I think we should do a restaurant together. And his response was pretty funny. He said, I'll never do another restaurant again. And I said, okay. And that was it. And then he called me back a week later.

27:07And he had said he spoke to a mutual friend of ours, Robert Chattern, who was a wine importer. And he asked Robert if, you know, talking to him, hey, Tom, you know, Tom, right? He said, yeah. He said, call me once to do a restaurant. And he said his response was, if Sandy Koufax called you up and said he wanted to pitch for your team, you'd probably say yes. Oh, my gosh. You got the Sandy Koufax reference. I think that's a really well, that's a nice analogy. And just to be clear, you know, Danny had been running Union Square Cafe. So that was the restaurant that he was really staking his career on, well-reviewed, to expand within the neighborhood.

27:40Probably some risk on his side, but clearly, you know, you're shaking your head. Well, the risk, not that it was, because it was actually, the neighborhoods were different. Even though they're close to each other, there's, the dividing line is 14th Street. Right. Everything below 14th Street and everything above. We were on 20th Street, so it was close enough. And it was a very different restaurant. I think the risks were, listen, we both took risks because we both put a lot of money. I mean, you know, this is what people didn't know prior to this book. They needed to bring me along and give me like two points as a chef.

28:09My partner and I, you know, ponied up a lot of money. And so we all took risks there. That was the risk. The risk is we put$3 million into a restaurant. At the time, it was a lot of money. And still a lot of money. And so that was the risk. but we had a great rent deal and what Danny and I talked about on that trip to Italy wasn't about food we didn't talk about service or anything like that we talked about what we felt was missing from the industry and how we wanted to run a business and we found that we both had very very similar ideas of how to run a business and so the rest of it just was a matter of now arriving at a concept design and again, we were very, very much in line with everything and did everything together and, you know, designed it, picked out wood, picked out furniture, picked out artwork.

29:05And Danny took care of the wine list. I took care of the menu. Yeah. And, you know, it was very successful at the beginning, meaning we were busy, but I didn't think we were doing the food that we were able to do. Yeah. I mean, Why I Cook covers a lot of business decisions. And I think the rent negotiations is really fascinating. You should read this book for really some behind the scenes. Because, Tom, you call yourself in the book a chef, of course, but then you're a little self-deprecating about being a businessman. You always assumed you were a businessman because you're clearly making these moves.

29:36But sometimes you felt like maybe you were trying to live two lives. Well, you have to as a chef. Yeah. Well, as a proprietor. If you own the restaurant, you have to pay attention to rent, food costs, labor costs, everything. It's, you know, who's cleaning the floors? You know, how are things getting done? How are you maintaining the restaurant? And so, and the struggle that I have is too often if you're a creative, but yet you have to do both. You have to figure out when to be creative and when to put a business hat on. And that's hard because it's hard to cycle back and forth between the two.

30:17And so I found that my most creative time was at Mondrian where I didn't care about the business, but I wasn't expected to be the business person there. I was expected to be the chef there. And I had to learn about business. I mean, I had to sit every month and go through a P &L with five guys from Morgan Stanley. They were the owners. And so I got a business education very quickly. But it is difficult to go between the two. Yeah, but did you feel as a business owner you were succeeding or were there at times when you felt like you were flailing? I learned a lesson at Mondrian. At Mondrian, we were busy.

30:51I got three stars at the age of 26 years old. It was a busy restaurant. But so here's the comparison. Mondrian, 59th between 5th and Madison, 80 seats in the dining room. Yeah. No seats in the bar, really. It was just a couple of stools in the bar. A 30-seat private dining room. we were paying$35 ,000 a month in rent. Wow, in like 1990s. Gramercy Tavern, about 120 seats in the dining room, 60 seats in the bar, a 20-seat private dining room, the rent was$9 ,000. Clearly. And so that tells you a lot. Yeah. But what that does, because if you're looking at running the business, if your rent costs are so low, that means there's a little more elasticity in your pricing, which means your wine prices, you know, right now you want to hit a 24%, 25%.

31:4025%. Back then, you could do with 32 % because our rents were so cheap. So you were allowed to be a little more generous with wine pricing, allowed to be a little more generous. Back then, I could run a 32 % food cost. Now I have to run a 26 % food cost. Yeah. And Mondrian, just the seats, there just weren't enough seats. There weren't enough seats. The rent was too high. And so that was a business lesson to be learned. And when I got to Gramercy, I handed it to Danny. He negotiated a tremendous rent deal. And a 30-year lease too, right? No, it was a 20-year lease. 20-year, okay. And it was 10 with two fives.

32:11Okay. But we ended up buying the space. Yeah. I had to twist his arm to do that. But also, the original space was only half of what we had. He only wanted to give up half the space, and we chipped away and said, no, we need the whole space. And little by little, we got there. It's an interesting moment of contention between you and Danny where the upstairs is available for private dining, which never happened. No, it didn't happen. And I was really disappointed there because I had done the work to, this was in the middle of Danny opening up, starting to open 11 Madison and Talbott. At least they were starting construction and stuff.

32:45And the opportunity came about and it would have given us another 120 seats for a private dining room plus a big lounge for pre-party spaces. Oh my goodness. We could have cut it in half. We would have had to refurbish the elevator to get people upstairs. The whole thing would have cost a million, two, something like that. and for various reasons it didn't happen. What does that look like today, having that space? Well, here's what was really crazy about that. So we bought the space on the ground floor. And again, I had to twist Danny's arm because he didn't want to do it. But to me, it made perfect sense.

33:21And the reason it happened is someone bought the building and they turned it into condos. And they looked at our rent and our rent killed their deal. So they said, do you want to buy the space? and it doubled our, the rent from the mortgage doubled. So if we were paying$10 ,000 a month in rent, it was gonna be$20 ,000 a month in mortgage. We were doing the business to afford it and then we owned the space. And then you owned the space. And so I got a mutual friend who was in real estate and said Danny down, walked through it and we ended up buying it. I remember at the closing telling him, there's gonna come a moment in time where it'll be, you'll make more money leasing this out than running a restaurant.

33:56We're there right now. Yeah, you're there right now. We're there right now. And you still, that space is still, as, I mean, with Mike Anthony. Oh, Michael's done a great job. What that restaurant stands for, I mean, it is now on the top five list. You have to visit New York. Yeah, in fact, I was involved in Gramercy's 30th. We did a dinner at the Food & Wine. Aspen. Aspen. Yeah. We did a 30th anniversary dinner, and I got to cook with Michael. He's such a great guy and a fantastic chef. Wonderful chef. So let's go back to the early days of Gramercy. I mean, this kitchen is just a stack deck. Marco Canora, James Tracy, Jonathan Beno.

34:30That was a little more, that was like more year three, four. Not the very beginning. But in the beginning, it was still. Earlier days, Akhtar Nawab and, of course, Claudia Fleming. You know, all of those names we know. I mean, these are all folks who've had tremendous careers. And really, they're all. Also, keep in mind, all those chefs that you just mentioned, they were cooks. No, of course. They weren't even sous chefs. No, right, right, right. I had other people that were sous chefs. These two women, Sarah Stegner and Sarah Schaefer, who were sous chefs, and then Juliet Pope, who was a saucier, who went on to become the beverage director there.

35:01Now she's selling liquor and wine. And so, yeah, there was just a ton of talent there. So why, what was the draw then for them? I want to get into the psychology of these cooks wanting to work with Tom Colicchio. Listen, Gramercy made a lot, you know, we got, especially after we got three stars. It was an important restaurant and people wanted to work there. It was also a busy restaurant. And we were doing a lot of, I think, very interesting things at the time. And we were running a regular menu, which was a price-fixed menu. And then we had a tasting menu, which is usually, you know, seven courses.

35:34And then we would have a specialty menu. So it could have been truffles in the winter. It could have been a wild mushroom menu or a tomato menu. And then there was another menu that was never written. It was a 10 - or 12-course menu, depending on what I wanted to do. And if somebody ordered it, I would just start directing people to cook. I would have a few things in my back pocket that I knew I wanted to do. But a lot of it was just do this, do this. And so think about a kitchen in the middle of a busy rush when the chefs have no idea what I'm going to ask them to do, but they were able to do it.

36:01There's echoes of an early Tom in their mentality wanting to work with a chef who's allowing them to cook literally and also just be able to write menus on the fly. It feels like that's a big part of your career, this mentorship that you give them. Well, this is the way I don't like. I'm not a planner. I'm not someone that's a long-term planner. And I'm very comfortable shooting from the hip. You know, also just knowing that the product is great. I know we can cook well. So it really doesn't matter now. I can, I can, I can, you can wing it and it will work. And, you know, occasionally do you look at a dish and go, hmm, that could have been better.

36:34Sure. But that's all part of the, you know, you know, having fun and experimenting and being in the moment. And a cool thing is you don't have to wait till the next day to change it. You could change it that very night. You know, the next time somebody orders, you can go tweak that a little bit. This shoot from the hip mentality, it came up in a recent David Chang interview with Marco. and they were talking about a time when you took a bandsaw to a bunch of asparagus, which is incredible. I mean, it's like Tom shoots from the hip and it's literally shooting from the hip. Well, that was, to me, it's like one of these things.

37:01We needed asparagus for dinner service and it came in very, very late. And then we had to like, someone had to cut them all. And they come in this wooden box, right? And they're all packed in nicely. Yeah, you go to the Unuscombe market, you get them in these crates. Well, this came packed in a wooden box. And so literally they were like, stop. And went over to the band saw and just ripped it through. And it was like, here you go. And they were just like, oh, my God. Through the box. It's funny. I have a podcast with David a little this afternoon. Oh, yeah. I'm sure you're going to talk about that one.

37:28And, of course, Chang worked with you at Kraft. And we'll get into that moment. And I don't want to spoil a really key moment in the book where you stand up in a meeting and speak to Danny in a way of your frustrated hint at this. And please, listener, pick up this book because it's a moment that feels like it was a rubber hits the road moment for your career. Yes. You know, Danny, again, we were looking, I say we, because I remember looking at another space with Danny. Michael Armando was really interested in Indian cooking and he wanted to do a restaurant. And Danny walked me over to a space on 26th Street off the park to take a look at it.

38:09I remember looking at it and saying, Danny, this looks like it's really, really complicated. It's not a great space. And we were walking back to the office, back to Gramercy, and there were signs in the window where 11 Madison Tala was. And I said, well, that would be interesting. And he said, oh, they called me. But it's like two spaces and they're really big. I said, let's go look at it. And so let's take a look at it. And we were going to do an Indian restaurant. Michael wanted to do an Indian restaurant. And then we were actually talking to Paul Bartolotta about coming and doing an Italian seafood restaurant.

38:37That's great. Wow. The history that would have changed with that choice. That was fantastic. Wow. And he couldn't work out a deal. But anyway, so I was involved in that. And then Danny had an offsite and we had an offsite the year before that just to talk about, you know, Gramercy, it was a planning menu, planning, a planning session that we were doing. This was, I thought, one of those. And he unveiled his vision for the Union Square Hospitality Group. and what I didn't care about it was he essentially said, you know, these two guys who had just started with us, one was getting, you know, Danny was getting 50, 51 % of the company.

39:11One guy was getting 20, the other guy was getting 12 and myself and Michael Armando and so they got Paul Balls-Bevan who was GM at Union Square Cafe were getting two each. And I stood up and said, my partner and I own 40 % of Grammarci Tavern. I don't know how you're making this calculation, but this doesn't make sense to me. And then it was very apparent that he already had this conversation with everybody else but not me and i was like i'm there was a meter this isn't gonna work there was a mediator in the room there was a mediator in the room who spoke up and i kind of looked at her and said i don't know who you are and you just need to be quiet right now and then and uh but but he and i worked it out yeah like we actually worked it out and we actually end up selling gramercy tavern to back to him well i sold my shares to him in fact the deal was worked out that i was going to buy it from him i know i was the only person in new York who wasn't surprised when Will and Gadara and Daniel Hum bought Eleven Madison from Danny because I was like I had the very deal this very similar deal I was gonna buy from him and I thought about it over a weekend and decided that you know I would be interested in selling out if he if he was minimal to pay me what I want do you regret it there are absolutely times I regret it um for a lot of reasons um uh mainly because it's it's such an important restaurant and just financially i mean owning that space is very valuable right now so a lot of reasons i i regret it but on the same thing i don't and the other thing that you know most people don't know is i didn't leave gramercy to open craft yeah craft was open for two years when i sold gramercy back to danny i did it for for a bunch of reasons but but uh you know yeah there's a regret but at At the same time, it doesn't keep me up at night.

40:49No, I think you probably have much more going on in your life with your kids and fishing. And I still would have had that all going on. Yeah. It wouldn't have changed. I probably wouldn't have opened another, you know, maybe another restaurant. In fact, I had Kraft Steak in Vegas opened already. And I had just shot the first season of Top Chef. So all that was happening. Yeah. But the reason I did it was because the heyday, at least for me, of Gramercy Tavern was when all those four munchin chefs were in the kitchen, but also Nick Maton was the general manager, Paul Greco, who went to do Hearth and Terroir.

41:26He was our service director, beverage director. And that to me was the golden era. I couldn't get it back to that. And so I thought it was time for me to go. I mean, let's just move on to craft because that is a new golden era. And you bring along Marco, You bring around some of the talent that... Benno, James Tracy, Oktar. This moment with Kraft, though, you work the line at Gramercy Tavern on the opening night of Kraft. This is interesting. Well, not to me, because Danny's big worry was that I was going to open this restaurant and not pay attention to Gramercy. And so for me, this was proving...

42:05You know, it's funny. Danny did the same thing the night that we opened Gramercy. He was at Union Square Cafe. Yeah, yeah. And for that very reason, he wanted to let the staff know that this new restaurant wasn't going to completely monopolize him. And so for me, it was the same thing. I was telling my staff at Gramercy that I'm not going to forget them. Yeah. And so opening night, it was around the corner, so it was easy. And, you know, Kraft was open. It was doing well. And I wasn't expediting. Marco was expediting at Kraft. So I was just in the kitchen making sure things were right. But I was able to just walk around the corner and jump on the pass and expedite.

42:39What are those first two years at Kraft like? This is the early 2000s. First two years at Kraft? Kraft, yeah. Kraft. Oh, it was great. I mean, you know, the thing is, Kraft was such a different restaurant. And on purpose, I wanted the food to be very, very simple. And there was a reason for it. So I was looking at dishes that I had done when I was at Mondrian. And I realized that when I, you know, and I would do a lot of these dishes at Gramercy, and I realized that I was starting to pare them down a little bit. and just get a little more older and more confident. You don't need the bells and whistles.

43:08And so I was stripping things down. And so I thought, what would my food look like 20 years from now if I kept doing this? And so that was the idea behind doing very, very simple food, but finding the best thing. Also, during this time, people, you know, we're talking about the farmer's markets and great ingredients. I was like, all right. So if we get this great ingredient, like a morel, the first morels of the season, and we got to put them in three different dishes, you know, they're on an appetizer, an entree, they're on a tasting menu. How about if we just serve a bowl of morels? Yeah. And then this all came into view during the Beard Awards.

43:42And for a couple of years, I would have friends back to the private dining room at Gramercy. Oh, busy week in New York in May. Always that way. But it was right after the awards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before the parties. It was, let's go eat somewhere. Let's sit down. Let's eat. You know, Thomas Keller and I would get together and go to Petrosian. That was our routine. We'd go to Petrosian. We'd have a few people with us. and like my wife would come, Laura, his significant other, and a few other chefs that was with him. We would go to Petrojan and have caviar and champagne and then go to the beer awards.

44:12And then I said, well, okay, let's come back to my restaurant. And so I remember calling my chef, John Schaefer, you know, that morning and saying, okay, I'm going to have just 12 people back. And what I want is I want a platter of roasted baby lamb. So we have the loin, the leg, the rack, shoulders, roasted or braised pieces, all just laid out. Olive oil, some fresh herbs, that's it. I want a bowl of butter braised morels. Oh, wow. I want another bowl of peas, and I want some roasted asparagus. I don't want dishes, I just want them on the table. And I remember walking in and going, and I said, I'll call you when I want them on the table, because I wanted them on the table when we walked in, because I wanted to get this fast.

44:49I remember walking in and seeing this and going, that's the restaurant. Incredible history there, Tom. And I think we joke about when you walk into a restaurant in 2024, people say we do things differently here. We're a shared plates restaurant. We're talking about the birth of new American share plates in many ways. This is my statement, of course. No, this is great. But we were doing large platters to share, not small plates to share. No, no. I hate this idea of small plates to share. I know. To share large plates. It's so frustrating to me if I'm out with six people. I love this. And I order something.

45:19I want to eat that. Someone puts it on the center of the table. By the time it comes to me, it's a smudge on the plate. I want to eat the dish and I want to actually pick through the dish. I want to eat several different bites. I want to make the perfect bite. I want to make the not so perfect bite. I hate that way of dining. I know. And I think it goes back to a time when share plates really meant plates. And I think the economics have kind of shrunken down these plates. You're a PNL guy, so you know that might be – I'm defending these, like, getting the one schmear of labneh off the half piece of bread when you're, like, number five.

45:47We all are frustrated in that time. And, like, when you look at it, it's, like,$26. You're like, well, I got to have a teaspoon of labneh on this little bread for$26. So with Kraft, I mean, I took a cue from going to Italy. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because crafts, Sergio Macrioni's wife had her birthday at the very beginning of crafts and she pulled me aside and she said, Tom, this is the best Italian restaurant in the city. And I kind of smiled and I said, she said, what's that about? I said, we don't really label ourselves an Italian restaurant, but it was. It absolutely was. And in Italian in the sense of you're getting very simple food, beautiful products, simply prepared, and you're ordering, you know, a piece of meat and it's going to be enough for two people.

46:28and then you're ordering your sides and you're making a meal. Yeah, if you travel throughout Italy, of course, pasta happens in certain meals. But other meals, of course, it doesn't. And this is the style of dining. We had pasta dishes too. Of course. But the whole idea was, and then we had oversized tables to accommodate all the platters. And so it was a very different kind of restaurant. What a fun era, early 2000s, in that, you know, you had like Man Ray, the club nearby. You had like these, you know, it was like downtown had a real, like creative energy. I think it's kind of come back post-pandemic in New York, I think downtown Manhattan.

46:59I don't know. The problem with the creative energy is it's too expensive for creatives to actually live here anymore. For sure. They get pushed out to the boroughs, which is fine. I mean, when I started working in New York, the artists that I knew, they were living in squats in Soho. The idea of squatting in Soho now, it means you're homeless. Yeah. No, it was a very, very different time. And quite frankly, I mean, I was in New York working during the AIDS epidemic. That changed everything. that really changed New York in a big way. I think we don't look back on it and kind of understand how much that changed everything in the city.

47:34You know, when you had more, when I had waiters, waiters dying. Yeah. And we had a cook at Raquel who was bisexual, who was married, he had kids, and he got AIDS and his whole family died. It was a terrible, terrible time. And it was a time where everybody was scared because I guess very much like the pandemic, But I remember living through them being scared, especially, you know, as a 20 something year old cook in the city, you know, sex was a big part of the landscape. You know, it's hard to say it wasn't. And then all of a sudden you were afraid of having sex. You were scared to death. And people stopped going out as much.

48:14It was a tough time, but also losing friends. It was a tough thing to go through. Yeah. I hope you can say more about that in a future episode because we have more to cover on this. But I think that's when we talk about these big cultural changes and these big world changes in New York, like the pandemic is one, the AIDS crisis is another. But post-pandemic, are you optimistic about New York dining? I mean, do you dine out yourself? Not that much. I don't. You know, post-pandemic, I got used to being home with my kids and my wife, and I'm spending more and more time at home. You have teenagers now.

48:47Yeah. My son is in school, and tonight's a school play. He's part of the crew. He's not part, he's not the cast member, but he's in the, and we're going. If this were 20 years ago, there was no way I would go to a thing at night. I'd have to be in a restaurant. And so - That's wonderful. And so, yeah, my priorities are a little different. You're a lucky guy. Dining, post pandemic, it's come back. Yeah. But it's gonna be, it's tough. We had a tough summer. fall's been fine we had a tough summer but it feels better I mean this is going to be controversial and now it is the laws changed so I can say this I think the sheds had to go and I know a lot of people made additional money during the pandemic it was important but I think as long as those sheds are the symbol of the pandemic one of the symbols in the city it's a buzz and I think we needed to get behind us and I know that's not a popular statement that I'm going to make But sidewalk dining, love it.

49:52Glad that it's easier to get permits. It's more acceptable. I think that's great. But I think we had to put this in our rearview mirror. Have there been any initiatives from the Adams administration here in New York that have helped restaurants? I mean, again, I think making it easier for sidewalk dining and hopefully that continues. Yeah. There's a couple of things working their way through the legislature in New York that is horrible. There's one law in particular where they can go after the investors in the restaurant. So if you have one of these wage and hour lawsuits against you, they can actually go into the investors and put liens on their homes.

50:41If this goes through, there is not a single person who will invest in a capital. The faucet is changed. It's just insane. Yeah. And there was another one that hopefully, I think it got shot down, where restaurants, independent restaurants and hotels would have had a change. business deals. Right, right. Would have had to change the way they do business. And hopefully that changed. Is tipping broken in New York right now? I think we should get rid of tipping for, not for the reasons why a lot of people want to get rid of tipping. My feeling is just, I'd rather be a meritocracy. Like right now it's not, because here's the thing.

51:20If you give someone a bad tip, you get bad service and you give someone a bad tip, my waiters aren't telling me that. I have a pooled house, right? That just goes in the pool. No, no one's gonna open their mouth if you don't tip anymore and you're getting bad service you call a manager over and say i got really rude service yeah now we can actually you know deal with that yeah um and so i'd rather be a meritocracy where someone's going to make like i did the work the the numbers my captains would be making 50 bucks an hour yeah and i'd be happy to pay the 50 bucks an hour if i can i'd have to um increase my menu prices by 25 that's going to be interesting but it's the same any i mean and why the five percent when most people tip 20 it's because now it's taxable yeah it's taxable income um and so uh tax tax does tax burden to me and and also to the which may change but my waiter but my waiters are all on the on the books yeah i pay them on books they don't get cash yeah we take you know we take most of the money comes in the credit cards and and we distributed it on a paycheck.

52:21Yeah, it's on a paycheck. I mean, both candidates in this past election have said they were going to, your face says it all, said they were going to take away taxes from tipping. Okay, whatever. Yeah, it's not. Great. Yeah, that was trying to get Nevada votes. I think it's, exactly, it's how to get Nevada votes, and I think it's probably two people who really don't understand, you know, that it's not like someone handing you a couple dollars and you put it in your pocket. That doesn't get declared anyway. Yeah. If someone takes cash and puts it in their pocket, that's not being declared. Most people get their paycheck.

52:53Yeah, through your computer. It's on a paycheck. Well, I have a final election question at the end of this, so stick around for that. But I want to continue just like putting a little bow on Kraft. I just really love Tom's Tuesday dinners and Damon's Frugal Fridays, which back in the day, Damon Weiss, I love Damon Weiss. He's such a terrific chef, barbecue pit master, and a cool guy. But tell me when the financial crisis hit, you kind of pivoted a little bit. Talk about those dinners, those two series. The Tuesday dinner came about because when I opened Kraft, I was at Gramercy. So I was doing that food, my style of cooking at Gramercy.

53:32And then I opened Kraft at very, very simple. Now I sell Gramercy. I'm only doing Kraft. And now I'm becoming known on Top Chef. Now all of a sudden I hear people coming to Kraft and going, this is it? This is all he does? Because it was so simple. Yeah. And I thought to myself, man, this is, I got to do something about this. You got to take advantage of this platform. And also, I'll be honest, you know, I was, you know, nominated for beer awards. So I won my region, New York. And so now you're eligible for best chef in the country. And I went from being nominated to not even making the short list, not even making the long list.

54:07Long list, yeah. And back then the long list was private. You didn't know about the long list, but I knew about it. And so I was going like, something's going on here. And so I was like, you know what? Let's do this Tuesday dinner thing. I do the Tuesday dinner thing, I win. And so, but I thought about it. It's like, I have to have an outlet to be creative because craft is not creative. It was never meant to be a creative venture. It's a workman-like restaurant in many ways because you're trying to nail the farmer's market. It was just making sure the product was front and center. Yeah, yeah, of course.

54:38And obviously when you're doing plated dishes and more creative foods, the product's still front and center, but you're sort of combining it in interesting ways and different techniques and things like that. Anyway, so I knew I wanted to do that. So we started doing that. Now we're doing that once a month and recession hits and we came up with this frugal Friday where the menu was really inexpensive and it was like really interesting food. I went three times. I was covering the scene at that time. 30 bucks. It was amazing. It was kind of in the basement. The space was kind of... No, it was the original craft bar.

55:10Oh, it was in craft bar. That was the original craft bar and then we moved Trap Bar around the corner and that became our private dining room. So we were doing it there because the private dining business completely dried up. That's what it was. It was cool. And so we started doing this Frugal Friday. It was alliterative, so why not? Why not? Tom's Tuesday. Yeah. And so, and Damon, this was like, Damon had full control over the menu and he was doing really quirky, interesting food. It was kind of a Neo Bistro before people actually had turned Neo Bistro. That's a great call. It was definitely like Neo Bistro you could see in like Paris in 2017.

55:38Same kind of menu. Same kind of menu, yeah. Yeah, wow. What a moment. Tom, before we get to Top Chef stuff, where do you find yourself cooking these days? Home. I still spend time in the restaurants. I'm still in the restaurants. In fact, the chocolate pan dinner that we just did, I did a new menu for that. A lot of new dishes that I've never done before. In the kitchen, touching every single dish that went out. It's a blast. Love doing it. Yeah. You know, my back hurt the next day. My knees hurt the next day. Are you rusty when you're like... Oh, I'm 62 years old. You know, I get tired, man. I mean, I'm on my feet and, you know, for the last 40 years and multiple surgeries and, you know, it's hard.

56:23It's hard. Yeah. Yeah. What will bring you into a restaurant? I know the Jacques dinner made sense, but I mean, will you just pop by just to make sure things are working? Yes, a couple of weeks ago, Saturday night, I'm usually never in the restaurant on Saturday night. I think I just decided to pop in and I spent two or three hours expediting. I just walked in and - That's cool. Took the pen and started expediting and it was a blast. Yeah. Loved doing it, but I'm able to, when I get tired, it's like I tap out. It's like I'm done. Occasionally, before pre-pandemic, I would jump on the line and cook.

56:57Yeah. Just because I love cooking on the line and so I would take one of the young cooks who now may be new on the meat station and I would say, all right, It's, I'll work with you. And I would work the station. And, uh, but again, after two hours, I could top out and go, I'm done. You're like, you guys, I'm done. Pick it back up. I'm done. Yeah. So this is really funny, really funny story. So when we opened Vallada, our Italian trattoria, that was right next door to crafts, I'm working the pasta station every night. And this one woman we hired, she was, she was, I think, from Thailand. Um, and she was working alongside of me.

57:34And I would come in at, you know, five o 'clock, 5.30, the station was already set up. I wasn't setting up the station. I'd walk in and I'd start cooking. And then, you know, probably around 10.30 at night, I'd have a glass of wine. And then when, you know, the last pasta was out, I'd walk, I'd leave. And so about a week or so in, she asked one of the, you know, the chef de cuisine, she's like, who, you know, this guy, this old guy who comes in, like, he's really good, but like, why does he get to come in at 5.30 and leave at the kitchen? She was complaining about you, Trump. He was like, that's the chef owner.

58:10She had no idea, which I really loved. It was great because I was just, you know, in chef coat on and a pair of jeans. Kids these days, they're on TikTok. They're not watching pizza cable. I would jump in and do my thing, but I love line cooking. I just wish I can do it. You pick your spots. But what about menu development with your guys? I do that. I mean, how does that work? I still do that. Yeah. Well, you're a nerd. You love this stuff. But I work, so I have two direct reports. Yeah. I have my director of operations and my executive chef. Those are the only two direct reports. So I usually work with our executive chef, Brian, who did his internship with me at Gramercy.

58:50Oh, wow. That's how long he got. And then from there, he worked in CMA with Marco and Paul. I feel like you probably are always thinking about food. Do you have like a notes app on your phone? How are you thinking about new dishes? I do have a notes app and occasionally I use it, but I never refer to it. I do a lot of, you know, it's funny when it comes time. I spend a lot of time on Instagram looking at what's happening, like every other chef does. And you see things that are like, oh, that's pretty cool. I like that. I'm never going to do that dish. But it's like, oh, I kind of like that. And then when it comes time to making a menu, I shut myself off from everything.

59:27I don't go to restaurants. I don't look at anything. And I want to see what comes out of it. and so I'm always looking I don't I should go to restaurants more frequently and I just don't for some stupid reason I mean why what's the stupid I mean there's gotta be a better than stupid reason I live in Brooklyn now and I get home once I get home I don't wanna leave my house hey man there's restaurants in Brooklyn I know there is I'm just gonna tell you I know there are I go to a few of them I live in Fort Greene so I go to Theodore's really good and Saler's really good and there's a whole bunch of restaurants there that are great is it celebrity stuff because I mean is it alone uncomfortable not not you but like it becomes a little bit of a thing i do get overfed um overfed but you also get a lot of photos which i'm sure you're fine with yeah yeah i'm fine that's all i just once i get home i don't want to go out you know i just get home and i'm with my family and we just hang out it's hard it's hard my wife the same thing after you know busy day like she doesn't want to go out um but i need to start getting out more you have a nice kitchen i'm I'm sure you have some space.

1:00:26So like, brother, I respect it. No need to say more. No, but it's also, I just need, like friends at open restaurants. Yeah. And Andrew Carmelini, I haven't been to his restaurant. You haven't been to Catholic Carmelini yet? No, I really should go. Yeah. I should support him. I should, you know, but I just - Do the Graham thing, support it, all that, yeah. Okay, Top Chef. Again, I wanted this conversation to be about your career. Thank you, Tom. It's been really, really cool. But let me ask you just simply about Top Chef. What's the best thing and worst thing about filming Top Chef? So the best thing is I love the people I work with.

1:00:59I love the fact that I get to mentor a lot of up and coming chefs because what the average person doesn't see, because, you know, we have seven, six to seven cameras shooting. It takes two days to shoot an episode, six to seven cameras shooting 14 hours a day. You see 48 minutes of that. So there's a lot of back and forth. We're not allowed to interact with the chefs off camera, sometimes judges table and that critique portion of it could take two hours three hours you're not seeing any of that so there's a lot of information that we're giving them and you start hearing afterwards going like you know they listen to what we're saying and they come out of the experience saying it's changed me the experience has changed them too and um you know it makes you look in it makes you you know dig down deep because it's hard it's very very hard so i love that aspect of it love the people i work with it it's like i would say it's like going to summer camp yeah because the majority you know the cameramen the ADs the directors the producers um I see them for six or seven weeks and that's it and then I don't see them again maybe I see them doing the Emmys and things like that but and so and then the following year you go back and do it again and then you have stories that report back from your other lives and it's great the downside and it's not so much a problem anymore but when I first started doing the show I'd get really angry um and it took me I'm trying to figure out why I was getting angry when they would say you know show up at a certain time and to get there and then we wouldn't shoot for three hours.

1:02:20I'm like, I'm sitting around here for three hours. Like, can't you call me later? And the response that I got was you're, I'm treating you like, like treat any talent, like talent, you know, the people in front of the camera call talent. Right. And so I was like, listen, I have a business to run. I'm on the phone. And he said, I was like, I didn't know you were still doing that. And so I realized that I was getting angry because in my life, I control my schedule. I control what I do, when I do it, where I go. Now all of a sudden someone's making a schedule for me and I didn't like it. And so I had to figure out how to navigate that.

1:02:49Yeah. But that's really the only downside. I mean, that and the fact that I'm away from my family for the six weeks. Yeah. Although I do fly back and forth depending on where we are. And you're gearing up for a new filming? Oh, no, we just finished. You just finished? Yeah, we just finished. Yeah, we shot in Toronto. I can say that. Yeah. And then we just shot our finale. Can't say where that was. Yeah, but tell us, was it a competitive season, I would imagine? It was, I think, the most competitive season we've ever had. Probably my favorite season. Love to hear that. And that leads to my next question.

1:03:19I've asked our friend Gail Simmons about this too. It's incredible how the show has gained popularity. That is like the inverse of literally every television show made. What has happened with Top Chef? How has it actually grown in popularity as the seasons roll on? I think it's real. And I think people realize that. Our critique is not about zingers and one-liners that's Instagrammable. It's not who I am. It's not what I want to do. And I think we all realize that we have to be really honest. When I say all of us, me, Gail, Kristen, whoever the guest judge is, like real honest conversation about food.

1:03:55And I think it comes through that we're not looking to make TV. We're serious about food that we're doing. The chefs are all really accomplished. We don't bring on home cooks and things like that. And so I think it comes through. I think the authenticity comes through. Favorite winner from the past 21, 22 years. Favorite winner. I don't have a favorite. I can't have a favorite. I'm trying to. One of my favorite meals, finale meals, was Melissa King's. Yeah. I thought what she did was just brilliant. She's Chinese-American. We're in Italy. And she managed to weave this Italian theme into her Chinese cooking that was really just beautiful to see.

1:04:39Yeah. Yeah. There's so much talent there. I mean, going back to like, you know, I just had Angela Sosa on the show from season two. You know, you just get so much. And his, I mean, his restaurants right now are like really good. Yeah. Like out of Phoenix. Yeah. Yeah. But also, again, we bring in working chefs who are on the show. And listen, Angelo also, you know, going back, that was 16 years ago or something. He's, you know, he also was one of those chefs who decided I'm going to be positive with something I'm passionate about. I'm going to study it. I'm going to learn it. And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to be a chef here.

1:05:10I'm not going to be running around, you know. Yeah. and getting wrapped up in celebrity. I want to make great food. And he does. And you see it time and again. You know, your alumni, even if folks have not made it that far, they're working. Oh, sure. They're not doing social media. Juan Mio Wich, he's probably the hottest chef in America right now. He, I think, was, I don't know. I don't think he made it to the finale. Yeah. Yeah, because he's, same thing with him. You know, he leaves Top Chef, gets wrapped up in doing this tasting menu, doesn't work out. Then he does another restaurant, And it does work out, but he has a problem with his partner.

1:05:45And then he goes on and - And Tatiana is still incredible. And he's opened a second restaurant in DC. Yeah, no, his career has been incredible. I mean, it's such a remarkable show that the format really hasn't changed that much. I mean, Restaurant Wars has been part of our lives for - There's a few things, little tweaks here and there, but no, the format hasn't changed. Which makes it incredible that it actually is still popular. Are you involved in casting at all? No, I'm just involved in complaining about casting every season. You see your list and you're like, ooh, yeah. No, it's not that. It's like, you know, I think sometimes there's a reaction.

1:06:22So if someone runs away with a season like a Buda Lowe, then all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, you know, maybe if we get someone that talented on, it's going to run away from it. It's not going to be a horse race. And so now we dumb it down a little bit. No one will say they're doing that, but you get a sense that it's happening. Yeah. And then it's like, come on, just give me, you know, eight chefs that are going to like really but you know we we there's there's various ways of casting we're casting for diversity obviously yeah casting you know our industry is not made up equally of men and women and we usually cast it right down the center every every season and uh so i'm really proud of that and also what that does it's the hardest the hardest thing uh especially now in the barrier opening a restaurant is getting funding i know if you're a minority you're a woman that's That's even more difficult.

1:07:07And I think our show provides a showcase for those communities that after the show, they get funding. And so that is probably what we're most proud of. Last question I said in the top, I wanted to talk about the election. And we're recording this two days after the results are in and Trump will be president. Tom, let me ask you about just the shifting in voting. It's been clear. Again, we're two days out, so we don't know the full picture, but it's clear that in every state, the Latino vote has shifted towards Trump. And I make the observation that, you know, in restaurants, Latino workers are the backbone of restaurants.

1:07:45We've been saying this for a long time. It's obvious if you walk into restaurants. I think there's a perception perhaps that restaurants may be more liberal spaces and places that maybe have leaned left, but clearly that's not the case looking at the electorate. What is your observation with the way that Latino voters have definitely shifted right and so many of these individuals are working in restaurants? I don't know if it's a right-left issue. I think the shift was inflation. Simple as that. I campaigned for Kamala Harris. I was knocking on doors on Tuesday morning in Pennsylvania, in Bucks County.

1:08:26I was in Michigan. And was I disappointed? Yeah. You look at the reaction everywhere. There was a couple things. It was like just a bunch of different little things that I think caused so many people to just not necessarily vote for Trump, but not vote for Democrat. Yeah. And I think inflation was a big problem. And as much as we want to look at the numbers and go, inflation's come down. And, you know, unemployment is the lowest it's ever been. The stock market's through the roof. These are all indicate, I mean, the Wall Street Journal, two days before the election said, the next president will inherit the best economy ever.

1:09:10Somehow. That's a right-leaning publication. We could say that. Oh, yeah. That's a non-believement. That's a none of, I mean, let's be real. And somehow, the Biden administration couldn't communicate that. And I think that they believe that if they just did things, you know, and did a lot of really great things. You think about the Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act. There are so many things that they passed that were just really good, you know, just great law that helped the American public. They weren't messaging. I think they thought they did these things and the press was just going to put it out there.

1:09:47And, you know, go back to FDR. I mean, obviously, the medium is different, right? Medium is the message, right? And so FDR, during coming out of the Depression, the fireside chat, right? He would come into your living room. It was once a week, whatever it was, every other, and talk to you about what was happening. Could you imagine if the Biden administration got on TikTok, on Instagram, on all these media channels, and all at once just had him wall, you know, shooting him live and broadcasting. This is what we're doing, right? In real time, yeah. This is what we're doing. Not policy points. This is what's happening.

1:10:22Right, real time. Yes. Inflation is high. These are the reasons why. Number one, yeah, we pumped a ton of money into the system. Well, what's the alternative? You know, that$400 a week that you got when you were on employment, that extra money that the federal government was putting into unemployment? The alternative is you didn't get that, you were out of your house, right? So what's the alternative? And saying, yes, inflation will go up. Absolutely. When they started getting the checks from day one, they said that. Well, and they were doing things to bring it down, and they did bring it down, but prices aren't down.

1:10:53Inflation is back down to 2 % vis-a-vis what prices are now, right? But this needed to be explained. And the idea, the Latino vote, these are the same people who just, you know, they're shopping in supermarkets too. Price of milk's up, eggs are up, everything's up. And they're sitting going like, this didn't happen under the other guy. And I think it's that simple. I, you know. It was a messaging issue with the Democratic candidate. When the, people forget about the pandemic. Yes. And they forget that, you know, Biden became the president under the worst circumstances. Turn it around, prevented a recession, which everybody, everybody was pretty clear.

1:11:34They were like, we're going to have it. Be ready. And so, and so, yeah. And so, listen, if you were, if you were investing in the stock market in the last three years, you're happy as hell. but there's too many Americans who aren't invested in the stock market. And there's too many Americans who are sitting here just trying to pay bills. And they got pissed off and they got pissed off when they looking at someone who they look at as, as being the elites saying, Oh, it's not that bad. And I was guilty of that myself on social media saying, Oh, things weren't that bad. I know. And, and, and, and, you know, coming from a very blue class, um, background and watching my mother struggle to pay bills.

1:12:09um so i i think this i think this is pretty easy to understand i i think whether it's latino men whether it's black men whether it's white women um you know who who just decided not to vote for the democrat yeah that's that's what i i don't think it's anything more than that um you know there's other there's something else that i thought was really really interesting and when Trump was saying it, everybody was like, you know, I can't believe this is coming out of his mouth. He would say, everybody wanted this to go to the states, meaning abortion. Everybody wanted to go to the states. Now it's in the states.

1:12:45There were six ballot initiatives. I think it was Oklahoma, Nevada, Florida. Kansas already passed. Oh, yeah. Just for this election. Arizona, where abortion was enshrined into the state constitutions except for Florida. And Florida changed the ballots where you had to get 60 % of the vote. Super majority. They got 57 % of the vote. Yeah, very close. Yet, those same people that voted for that ballot initiative and to enshrine abortion also voted for the president, their congressman, their senator, who doesn't support bodily autonomy. Square that. Yeah. What happened is Trump was smart enough to say, I'm going to create the permission structure for you to vote for abortion in your state, but also you don't have to vote for the politicians because you take it out of the politicians' hands.

1:13:33Now, that could change. He says he won't he won't repeal. Well, no, he's not. That's already repealed. He said he won't sign a bill that outlaws abortion. Yeah, that's what we'll see what happens. and so but I there's there's these little things that happened over the course of the last couple weeks that I just you know look at now in retrospect and say okay we should have seen this coming you get caught up in it it's hard to see but I don't think this is a repudiation of the Democratic Party I think this is just bad times for the last you know three years and a lot of working class people looked at this and just said okay Enough's enough.

1:14:14Yeah. And a candidate who messaged it correctly. Oh, yeah. Democrats do a very bad job messaging. Yeah, I was messaging it too. Last question. I want to ask you about speaking to President-elect, you know, what can he do to help a restaurant worker's life become better? You're shaking your head. I don't know. I don't know. Most of that's going to happen on the state level. I think there are things that are probably going to happen to make a small business owner easier to run a business. That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to help the worker. Right, right. The person signing the checks on the front is going to probably benefit than the guy signing checks in the back.

1:14:55Sure, sure, sure. It must be seen. Listen, I think, you know, most economists agree that if he puts these tariffs through, it's going to cause inflation to go back up. If you follow the bond market, the bond market's getting crushed, and it usually means that interest rates are on their way back up. It's coming, yeah. The bond market's a little foot more for leaning. And so that could hurt. That's going to hurt everything. That's what the Democrats warned. So that message was correct. Economists warned that. Right, I guess. The Wall Street Journal warned that. Right, good point. It's not Democrats that went, this is, it's going to happen.

1:15:35And we'll see. But this is what you voted for. This is what the country voted for. And we'll see what happens. I've observed this on the show. I don't know you, but I've followed your work with Restaurant Coalition and your obvious engagement with politics. Tom, have you considered running for public office? I've been recruited to run for public office. I have been recruiting you on the show. No, I thought about it. You know, New York, I have a house in Long Island in Mattatuck, and that's New York won. We lost that race again. John Avalon was a good candidate, lost again. And I thought about it, but I spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill.

1:16:13That's what I love about it. Some people are like, stay out of power. You know nothing about it. I spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill.

1:16:21And as much as I would like to do it and seeing an election like this, that really kind of makes me want to do it even more. I don't want to live in Washington. I like being with my family. And I think it would just be very, very, what I know of D.C. and the time I spent there, I think it would be very, very frustrating. So I don't completely... That's not a no, Tom. It's not a no. It's not a no, but right now I don't see that happening. It seems that as a change candidate too, looking at the next four years, Tom, you could be quite well-aligned speaking as you do. and you seem center in some ways.

1:16:56Oh, I am. I am. There's, I think, I'd probably lean left, but I'm not that far. Yeah, yeah. Hey, man, I'm not trying to be your media spokesman here, but I appreciate you being really candid about your recruitment because it would be terrific to see you in government. Yeah, I thought about it, but I don't know. I think it would just, it would drive me up a wall. And the other aspect of it, Because most of your job is fundraising. Yeah. I mean, if you're talking about just Congress, which obviously you are, yeah, that two-year term is tricky. But you're a young man. These politicians are up there in their 70s.

1:17:37You know, there's a bigger – there's some bigger fish to fry. I mean, it's one of the questions I got yesterday when I did an event. I said, well, you've done a lot. Is there anything left to do? And that's the only thing I can think about. Yeah. Well, let's leave that talk at that. Tom, on this is Taste West, guess about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? Sure. The best fruit? Mango. The worst vegetable? Okra. Yeah. You just won't put it on a menu. No, I won't eat it. Yeah, yeah. The best dessert? I like citrus.

1:18:13Yeah. Lemon curd, lemon tart, something like that, yeah. Sorbet, citrus sorbet. Spend that time out on the West Coast in January or February must be a nice time for you. You get it here. It's all good. It's true. Very true. It is New York City. Your favorite city outside America to visit for food? I haven't been to a lot of them, but of the ones I've been to, Singapore was fantastic. Also, I just love crab. And the chili crab is one of my favorite things in the world to eat. Your favorite cookbook of all time? There's a book called Unplugged Kitchen by Vianna Deplas, I think is her name. I just love the book.

1:18:49It's very simple. and it's like one of those books that I got it years ago and occasionally I pick it up and it makes me happy. Unplug Kitchen, I'm going to check that. I don't know that one. That's really cool. Is there a recent cookbook discovery that really is exciting you? Let me think for a second. I get a lot sent to me. I just got a Thai, I should know the author. I think she has a restaurant in Philadelphia. Oh, Kalaya. That's it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Southern Thai. She's been on the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. So I just received it and I like it. I love Thai food. I'll never cook it in a restaurant.

1:19:24There was one dish, when I had colicchio and sons, there was a dish that kind of was definitely in that direction. And I should go look for that. Was there a paste of some sort? What takes it in that direction? Oh, no. I was using, I don't know if it's Thai, but you know those thin sheets of sauce, but they're really thin sheets? I saw it first in Singapore. It's almost like pork leather. Oh, yeah. It's really good. So I remember using that, and there were chilies in it. Pork floss. Maybe that's what it's called, but there were chilies in it and things like that. And the dish was, I think it was like a stuffed squid, and I stuffed it with some of the Thai sausage, and it's really spicy, and rice.

1:20:06And it was stuffed, and then squid was roasted, and then had a chili sauce, and then had a very, very fine chef-in-law of that pork floss. Ooh, beautiful. Yeah, it was fun. Last one, your favorite sandwich. Favorite sandwich. Which, God, I don't know, that's hard. You know, summer tomato sandwich is hard to beat. BLT in the summer is hard to beat. Yeah, I think that's a great choice. Tom Colicchio, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you.

1:20:35This Is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.