- published: 23 Mar 2015
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Thomas Patrick "Tom" Colicchio (born August 15, 1962) is an American celebrity chef. He co-founded the Gramercy Tavern in New York City, and formerly served as a co-owner and as the executive chef. He is also the founder of Craft and Colicchio & Sons restaurants. Colicchio is the recipient of five James Beard Foundation Medals for cooking accomplishments.
He has been the head judge on every season of the Bravo reality TV show Top Chef. Colicchio has been a featured chef on Great Chefs Television.
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.
Padma Parvati Lakshmi (Tamil: பத்மா பார்வதி லக்ஷ்மி, Padmā Pārvati Lakshmi ?; born September 1, 1970) is an Indian American cookbook author, actress, model and television host. Her debut cookbook Easy Exotic won her the "Best First Book" award at the 1999 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. She has been the host of the US reality television program Top Chef since season two in 2006, for which she received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program. In 2010, Top Chef won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program.
Padma Lakshmi was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India in a Hindu Iyengar Brahmin family. Her father was a Pfizer executive and her mother Vijaya, the first wife of her father, was a nurse who specialized in suicide prevention. Her mother tongue is Tamil. She grew up shuttling between her grandparents in Chennai and her mother in New York. She is her parents' only child from this marriage. Her parents separated when she was age one. They divorced a year later. Both parents later remarried, and Lakshmi has a younger paternal half-brother and half-sister. The latter formerly worked as an actress and classical dancer but is now pursuing a career with children with special needs. In an interview in The Guardian, Lakshmi said, "My father had quit his job as an executive at Pfizer to manage her career. That was kind of like rubbing salt in the wound. I didn't understand why he wanted that relationship with her, and not with me."
Gail Simmons is a trained culinary expert, food writer and television personality, and is the Special Projects Director with Food & Wine magazine. In addition to her role with Food & Wine, she is a regular judge on the television show Top Chef and hosts its spin-off, Top Chef: Just Desserts.
Prior to joining Food & Wine, Gail was the special events manager for chef Daniel Boulud’s restaurant empire and worked for food critic Jeffrey Steingarten at Vogue.
She was born in Toronto, and graduated from McGill University in Montreal, where she majored in anthropology and Spanish. She began her food journalism career writing restaurant reviews for the McGill Tribune before moving on to the monthly magazine Toronto Life and later to the daily National Post newspaper.
Simmons attended culinary school in New York City at the Institute of Culinary Education and apprenticed at Le Cirque and Vong.
Gail’s first book, her memoir Talking With My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater, was published by Hyperion in February 2012.