Tom Colicchio Quotes

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Tom Colicchio

Profession : Chef

Birth : August 15, 1962

'Chef' doesn't mean that you're the best cook, it simply means 'boss.'

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

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

I remember at The Quilted Giraffe, when I was when working there to try out for the sous-chef position. I really wanted it, and the woman working the line next to me kept messing up and making me look bad. The last day of my kitchen trail, I just said to her very quietly, 'Do me a favor and get out of my way, because I want this job.'

Tom Colicchio

Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key.

Tom Colicchio

Hunger is a political issue, and there are several things politically that are keeping people hungry - not funding food stamps adequately, not funding school lunches adequately. So there is a political solution to the problem of hunger.

Tom Colicchio

I know how to make sausage, and now that I've seen how laws are made, I'll stick with sausage.

Tom Colicchio

There's a food revolution going on throughout the country. And it doesn't matter if you're down south, up north in Maine, if you're out west in Portland or Seattle.

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

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

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

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

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

You want to be the baddest guy in the kitchen and you want the person next to you to know it.

Tom Colicchio