Life and Career
Colicchio was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He is Italian-American on both parents' sides. He has been married to filmmaker Lori Silverbush since 2001. He has three sons, Dante (1993) from a previous relationship, and Luka Bodhi (2009) and Mateo Lev (2011) with current wife Lori.
In July 1994, Colicchio and his partner Danny Meyer opened the Gramercy Tavern in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan. It was voted Most Popular Restaurant in New York City by the Zagat Survey in 2003 and 2005. He sold his interest in 2006 and is no longer affiliated with the restaurant.
In spring 2001, he opened the first Craft restaurant one block south of Gramercy Tavern. A year later, he opened the first Craftsteak at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. In 2003, he began the first 'wichcraft', his sandwich shop. In 2010, he opened Colicchio & Sons, and also Riverpark.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Colicchio joined volunteers serving food to rescue workers at Ground Zero.
On January 19, 2009, at a U.S. presidential inaugural event in Washington D.C. Colicchio performed the Heimlich maneuver on award-winning cookbook author Joan Nathan, who was choking on a piece of chicken.
Colicchio served as the main consulting producer on Bravo's Top Chef spin-off series entitled Top Chef Masters.
Colicchio won the 2010 Outstanding Chef award from the James Beard Foundation. He also won an Emmy award in 2010 for Outstanding Reality-Competition Programming as an executive producer of Top Chef, on which he also appears.
Colicchio appeared in the fifth episode of the first season of HBO's Treme as himself along with fellow chefs Eric Ripert, David Chang and Wylie Dufresne. He made another cameo in Season 2 alongside Ripert.
In 2011, he made cameos in the Season 23 premiere episode of The Simpsons, "The Falcon and the D'ohman," and The Smurfs.
Colicchio has written three cookbooks. He, Jeff Bridges, and Raj Patel will appear in the new documentary film A Place at the Table to be released in the U.S. on March 1, 2013.
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