Top Chef's Tom Colicchio on life at the top of the food chain

When Top Chef premiered on Bravo in March 2006, few viewers would have recognized the show's bald and blue-eyed head judge, Tom Colicchio. Though he was already a big star in New York's food community, leading Danny Meyer's Gramercy Tavern and his own Craft to coveted three-star reviews in the New York Times, Colicchio was still a chef, someone who spent most of his time in the kitchen, not mugging for the camera. But the past year has changed all that for Colicchio, whose opinions always overpower the more delicate temperaments of his fellow judges. To Colicchio, a dish isn't mediocre, but boring, not bad, but terrible. He may be in good spirits tonight, though, when the third-season finale of the reality cooking competition airs on the heels of his newest restaurant opening, an offshoot of Craft in Los Angeles. Radar caught up with Colicchio to talk haute cuisine, Top Chef contestants past, and how he thinks he'd fare in a reality TV cook-off.

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RADAR: Do you feel more famous now that you're a TV star?
Colicchio: Definitely. TV reaches a lot more people than a restaurant can.

I'd also imagine that TV success fuels business in your restaurants.
People do come in. When we opened in Los Angeles, a woman caught my eye. I came by and said hi, and she said, "I had no idea you were an actual chef. I have so much more respect for you now!"

As a classically trained chef, does it bother you that people may come into your restaurant more for your celebrity than your food?
It doesn't bother me. However they get there is okay. To me, the popularity of restaurants came about in the '80s, when people realized they couldn't keep going out to clubs every night and they started to come to restaurants for entertainment.

Would you be entertaining as a contestant on Top Chef? How would you do on the show?
I think I would do fine when I was a lot younger. It takes a lot of stamina to do the show. Routinely, judging table lasts until four or five in the morning. It's a lot of hours. But when I was 26, I had a three-star restaurant from the New York Times, so I think I'd be okay.

Do you ever listen to the contestants' challenges and think you'd struggle with them?
It happens a lot. When you sit around and think about it, you think you could do it. But when you have 30 minutes to do something, they're just reacting as cooks and chefs.

Yet sometimes you seem less than sympathetic when you visit contestants as they're cooking. Are you trying to undermine or intimidate them?
Here's the thing that's very subtle: I'm not allowed to give them direction. My role is very different than Tim Gunn's. I'm judging them. So I can ask questions. I can ask leading questions if I want, as long as they're questions. Some people pick up on it and some don't. I might say, "You're braising when you only have two hours. Do you think you'll have time for that?"

Do you ever think it can come off as smug?
That may be the editing.

Did you try to clue C.J. in that his broccoli wasn't going to work? [Colicchio called the dish the worst food made on Top Chef in all three seasons.]
That one, no. When someone says they're doing broccoli, okay, fine. It's not a matter of what they're doing, but how they do it. He took the lid off the container when it went in the oven, and it dried. With most cases, it's not what they make, it's how.

Bravo Photo/Glenn Watson