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When chef and television personality Tom Colicchio goes out to eat, he often hears diners describing food as they would fine wine. They’ll say something like a dish needs a little more acid or they might note that “the herbaceous notes were pretty good.” He wonders, “Did I create this monster?” His restaurants include Craft and the Wichcraft sandwich chain, with eight locations in New York City, but his role in America’s enthusiastic foodie culture mostly comes as judge and executive producer for the Bravo reality show “Top Chef.” Currently in its 13th season, the show puts contestants through a series of cooking tasks while Mr. Colicchio, 53, and two other judges criticize their performances. What he really wants to do now is change the way people eat. With his nonprofit Food Policy Action, he’s hoping to persuade Americans that food policy should be more prominent in politics. “The idea is, how do you raise the idea of food up to a level of the Second Amendment and reproductive rights?” he says. The problem, he adds, is that “calories are cheap. Nutrition is expensive.” His goal is to have the government make policy changes that direct farm subsidies away from commodity crops like corn (which often goes into processed food) and toward organic farms, to make produce less expensive for consumers. Other changes he’d like to see are healthier school lunches and labels for foods that contain genetically modified ingredients. Mr. Colicchio knows school lunches: His mother managed his high-school cafeteria in Elizabeth, N.J. Growing up, he taught himself how to cook by reading Jacques Pépin cookbooks. His father, a barber who became a corrections officer, encouraged him to take up cooking professionally at age 17. So he started working at a local seafood restaurant and then moved to New York. In 1994, he and restaurateur Danny Meyer opened Gramercy Tavern with the goal of combining fine dining with a less formal setting. In 2001, he opened his first restaurant, Craft. These days, Craft is trying out a new service policy: no tipping. Last fall, Mr. Colicchio announced that he would abandon tipping at Craft’s new lunch service. He and Mr. Meyer used to talk about it at Gramercy Tavern, he says—Mr. Colicchio sold his stake in 2006—but the time didn’t seem right until now. (Similarly, Mr. Meyer plans to eliminate tipping at all of his restaurants.) He points to studies from Cornell University showing that people tip more based on factors like the server’s race and gender than on the quality of service. In that case, he says, he would rather pay servers directly than leave it to diners’ discretion. He says that his role on television is a minimal part of his daily life; he only spends five to seven weeks a year filming. The show has been criticized for promoting dramatic characters over talented chefs, but Mr. Colicchio says that it isn’t a factor in his decisions. “I don’t care about the story,” he says. “My problem is to judge who makes the best dish.” He spends much of his time meeting with developers on his new projects, designing new menus and interviewing people for positions in his company, Crafted Hospitality. Whenever he opens a new restaurant, he spends time in the kitchen helping to oversee the staff. “I want to show these young guys I can do it,” he says. But his company is getting so big that he’s thinking of bringing in someone else in to run the business so he can focus on the creative side. In his downtime, he enjoys playing guitar, fishing, gardening, boxing and spending time with his family. He and his wife, a filmmaker, have two children, age 4 and 6; he also has a 22-year-old from a previous relationship. His next project is a restaurant at the Beekman, a new hotel and residential building in lower Manhattan. He won’t reveal the concept or the name, but he says that the menu may bring back classic dishes such as oysters Rockefeller and crab Louie and “throw them on their head a little bit.” It isn’t an easy business. He’s at work now on a plan to improve the public profile of his 14-year-old sandwich chain, Wichcraft. “Fine casual” has become a buzzword, associated with chains such as Sweetgreen and Dig Inn, and Wichcraft has always embraced it, stressing high-quality ingredients and where they come from. Mr. Colicchio wants to highlight that commitment with a new design. “We’re looking at all these other companies…and all of a sudden they’re up on a soapbox talking about all the farms that they’re using, and we’re like, ‘We’ve been doing this forever!’” he says. “We realized we really screwed up the messaging and marketing of our product…and we’re sitting here going, ‘Hey, what about us?’”
