As "Top Chef" goes global, Tom Colicchio reflects on the competition's recipe for success

This season, "Top Chef" goes international, with 16 chefs representing 11 global editions competing for the title of world all-star in London. When Tom Colicchio joined "Top Chef" nearly two decades ago, he had no idea that the culinary competition, which airs Thursday nights on Bravo, would reach this scale.

"When we first started shooting, I thought maybe we'd get a couple seasons, and family and friends would watch, and then that was about it," Colicchio said on "Salon Talks." "We had no idea that it would turn into what it turned into."

From the moment that Season 20, officially titled "Top Chef: World All-Stars," kicks off, something quickly becomes evident to viewers. Since its debut stateside in 2006, the reality series has touched all corners of the globe.

"I don't think the average person realizes how difficult it is to do what these chefs are doing," Colicchio shared. "They're often cooking 16 hours a day. They're being judged in a quick fire and then the elimination, and then there's one day of rest, and then they're back in it again. It's just day, after day, after day. They're putting a lot of time and a lot of effort in. It's physically demanding."

What makes this season unique is that every contest is either a winner or a finalist, upping the stakes of the challenges right out of the gate. The list of contestants begins with Buddha Lo, who arrives in London fresh off winning "Top Chef" Season 19 in Houston, as well as Spain's Begoña Rodrigo, whose La Salita restaurant in Valencia has a Michelin star. Despite their depth of experience, the game remains difficult even for this group of all-stars.

But it's still the "Top Chef" viewers know and love, a competition revered for its sense of authenticity. The winners of each season, as well as those asked to "pack your knives and go," have been chosen by the show's judges rather than a team of producers.

"I've always judged exactly the same way," Colicchio said. "It's a criteria that I set for myself. It's looking at technique, looking at if something is cooked correctly. Is a green vegetable cooked correctly? Is it green, but still cooked through? Is a piece of meat cooked to the desired temperature that the chef wants?"

In an appearance on "Salon Talks," Colicchio described what it was like behind the scenes of the current season of "Top Chef," which filmed in London as history unfolded: the passing of the late Queen Elizabeth II. As we talked about the show's recipe for success, Colicchio also got personal — reflecting on his earliest memories of food, his Italian roots and why he still loves to cook at home. "At a very young age, I saw the power that food had to bring people around the table," he said. "And I think that's what really attracted me to it."

Watch the "Salon Talks" episode with Tom Colicchio here, or read the Q&A below.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

"Top Chef" goes international this season and there are 16 chefs representing 11 global editions. When you were filming the very first episode of "Top Chef," did you ever imagine that you would one day be hosting a global competition of all-stars?

I'd love to say absolutely I had that vision 17 years ago, but no. When we first started shooting, I thought maybe we'd get a couple seasons, and family and friends would watch, and then that was about it. We had no idea that it would turn into what it turned into. It's exciting.

The one goal that I had for the show when I agreed to do it was just to make sure that my industry accepted it as something that was worthwhile, and I think we passed that hurdle about Season Three or Four. We've just been fortunate that season after season, we just get great talent that we cast on the show. We're casting chefs that are already fairly accomplished, so it's no surprise that we've become the standard bearer for, I think, all reality TV, to tell you the truth, not just cooking competitions. If you see our chefs that are on, they go on to open multiple restaurants. They're winning awards. They're getting Michelin stars. I think the mission was accomplished. It's something our industry really looks up to and holds in pretty high regard.

As all-stars, every contestant is either a finalist or a winner, so in the very first episode, it felt to me like we were almost in the final four. Does it make your job as a judge more difficult?

The job judging it, it doesn't change. I've always judged exactly the same way. It's a criterion that I set for myself. It's looking at technique, looking at if something is cooked correctly. Is a green vegetable cooked correctly? Is it green, but still cooked through? Is a piece of meat cooked to the desired temperature that the chef wants? You don't usually see it on camera, but I usually ask the chef, how are they looking to cook this? If they say medium rare and it's medium, well, then they failed. Is something seasoned properly?

Then, you look at composition. And when I say composition, looking at all of the secondary ingredients on a plate and make sure that they're all in harmony. And then of course, you look at the challenge itself and to see if they adhered to the challenge. And so, the judging has never changed for me. When you have better chefs, it gets a little more nuanced. You're not seeing the remedial mistakes. Especially if you go back to the first couple seasons, we had some home cooks in there. You had some chefs who weren't as accomplished, and you saw some pretty basic mistakes.

You're not seeing that right now. But also, keep in mind that the chefs are under a lot of pressure with that clock. So it's very different from cooking, say in a restaurant, even though there is a time crunch in the restaurant as well. But if you were just home creating these dishes, you wouldn't have a clock constantly on your shoulders. So mistakes are made because of that too.

The other thing, I think also because of the way the kitchen is set up, where the stove is so far away from the workstation and they have to run back and forth, they're not just really spending all that time on the stove just watching every little thing. And so, mistakes can happen during that period. And also, cooking on location where the conditions aren't ideal can also throw a wrench into the works. There's a lot of parameters that we set about in the challenge and location, things like that, that clearly make it more difficult than if you had the perfect conditions cooking in your kitchen at home.

Even though it's "Top Chef," the competition actually varies from country to country. For example, in the first episode, we say goodbye to a contestant from France. However, we've learned that in France, contestants get a minimum of an hour and a half to cook, and they always cook in-studio, so it's very different from cooking on location. Do you think this gives American contestants an advantage, as they're used to these different parameters?

I don't think so. With the exception of Buddha, the chefs who are on, the American chefs, they haven't competed in a while. It's not like they're competing every day, and it's not like they're training for the Olympics or anything like that. So no, I don't think so. But the France show, I haven't seen it, but yeah, it's different. It's a two-hour show, and it's focused a lot more on technique, and they give the chefs a lot more time. It could be different going in, if that's that's what you think. But I'm assuming that the producers are letting the chefs know ahead of time, this is the way this show works. But listen, it's an even playing field. And some of the chefs that were on different regions, they did really well the first couple episodes too. The French chef made a very basic mistake. He didn't clean the shrimp. It doesn't matter if you have two hours to do that or 20 hours to do that, that's a basic mistake.

During that first episode, there's a dish that stuck out to me. It highlighted vegetables, and I'm still fascinated by Charbel Hayek's onion dish. I've never seen an onion cooked like that. Can you tell us a little bit about it and what made it a winning dish?

It was wildly creative and taking something really humble and simple like an onion and just the idea that he cooked it and then pulled it apart. He peeled back the onion layers, and then put — I forget what he put in between each layer and built it back up — but the flavor was just incredible. It really stood out. It was also one of these things where it was unanimous. Every single person at the table thought that was the best dish. Whenever you have that going, someone really knocked it out of the park. It was just an unexpected dish, taking something so simple. I wasn't privy to all of his planning because we're not involved in that and so I first saw it the same time everybody else saw it. Just watching that process of what he was thinking of going about and doing, and then watching him do it, it shows that he had some real skills.

He's such a young chef too. I think he's about 25-years-old. For a 25-year-old to have that much confidence to do something that simple... Because usually, younger chefs, they try to do a lot more and often get tripped up because they over-complicate dishes. And to do something that simple, or it appeared to be simple, but there were a lot of steps to make that simple dish work, it showed a lot of confidence and a lot of range.

You were filming in London when the late Queen died. What was it like to experience that historic moment up close?

What was really interesting about that is, the Saturday after she passed, I was living in Notting Hill. I walked to Buckingham Palace, and it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I had to go through two parks to get to Buckingham Palace, and walking through the parks, it was just a nice Saturday. Families were out having picnic lunches and playing ball and stuff. Then as you got closer to Buckingham Palace, you started seeing all the flowers and people coming to visit. It was strange because, in an hour-long walk, I went from a normal Saturday afternoon in the parks in London to this worldwide event. It was an interesting day. The Queen's motorcade passed our studio, and we all stopped and went outside and lined the streets like all the other Londoners and took it all in, but it was interesting.

It's funny though, being there and then seeing the news reports, it was very different. Yes, people were paying attention, but things were still going on in London. If you just watched the news, you would think that the whole entire city just came to a standstill for two weeks. That wasn't the case. But every shop that you went into, there was a portrait of the Queen that was actually put on counters. You saw it on billboards and in bus kiosks and things like that. It was a long time since there was a passing of a Queen or a King. Talking to my driver, he didn't remember any other Queen or King. That was it for him, and he was probably in his 60s. And so, it was interesting being there during such a historical event.

After initially turning "Top Chef" down, one of the things that you made sure of was that the decisions would be in the hands of the judges and not the producers. Do you think that's one reason that "Top Chef" has endured for so long and what sets it apart from other cooking shows?

I think so. I'm not going to say which show, but I was on a reality show a while back, and it was more of a design show. I thought the person who made the worst design should go home. And they turned to me and said, "No, we can't do that." I was like, "What do you mean you can't?" They said, "Oh, no, the producers won't allow us to do that." I said, "Well, we're in a very different show than mine." They were shocked that we got to make those decisions, but it's a cooking competition, and unless you're tasting that food, I'm sorry, you can't comment. Unless you're eating that alongside of us, you have nothing to add to the conversation.

There are times when we have a hard time. Maybe a producer will come down and talk to us and say, "You said X, Y, and Z, you said X, Y, and Z. What are you thinking?" But they don't make the decisions for us. They help us by at least just reminding us of what we've said in the past about certain dishes, but they don't interfere at all. It's our decision, and we take it seriously. We want to make sure we get it right.

I think the only difficult times that we've had in 20 seasons — and we stopped doing this — there was a while where we would split up. Maybe I would go with Gail [Simmons] and one of the guest judges and Padma [Lakshmi] would go with another guest judge. If we had two guest judges, maybe she would go and we would split up and have different dinners. Sometimes, they didn't match up. I remember Nick and Nina, in that finale, it was clear that there was one dish that, as described to me, was not the dish that we got. That was really, really hard to make that decision because I can only base it on what I got. And then, there was a whole other thing that Nick yelled at a waiter, and I didn't know that. I had no idea. And so, I couldn't factor that into it, nor would I factor that into it. But we stopped doing that for that reason. It just became very, very difficult to judge if we were eating different meals at different times.

It's something that we take seriously. And we each have our ways of looking at food, and we try to actually get to a consensus. There are times we don't, but for the most part we do. We'll argue it out, and we'll spend a lot of time. The viewing audience sees very little of that, but we take a lot of different factors into consideration. But I think, ultimately, we strive to get it right, and we start even in the early rounds. And there are times when the judges will come together and go, "Yeah, this was the worst dish. There's no discussion." Obviously, we have to have one or there would be zero drama. And there are times that we know right away who's going to win, and there's no discussion. Sometimes it's that obvious, but other times it's not.

How do you see your role on the show? Do you think of yourself more as a mentor or a power broker, perhaps?

No, not a power broker, definitely a mentor, though. I'm giving them honest feedback. I'm giving them the kind of feedback that I would give any chef in one of my kitchens. What I try to do is try to really understand what they're trying to [do]. When you're cooking at that level, it's good to understand what the chef is going for, what they're trying to accomplish, and seeing if they actually do that. For me, the criticism that I'm giving is just constructive criticism, and I'm trying to be very careful. I'm not giving them feedback on how I would make the dish because that's not the issue. The issue isn't what I would do, it's what they did. So I critique on what they did. You'll never hear me say, "Well, I would've done X, Y, and Z." What does it matter what I would've done? It doesn't matter. It matters what they did, and that's what I'm critiquing them on.

I think the show has become a power broker. But I think for me, I treat them like they're in my kitchen and I'm mentoring them. We don't interact with the chefs at all unless we're on camera until the finale. When I say the finale, once we announce who's winning, and then we get up, and then we're allowed to actually have conversations with them. A lot of times the feedback that I'm getting is, "Thanks for the feedback. It's changed the way I look at food. It changed the way I cooked."

Going through this is like a bootcamp. I don't think the average person realizes how difficult it is to do what these chefs are doing. They're often cooking 16 hours a day. They're being judged in a quick fire and then the elimination, and then there's one day of rest, and then they're back in it again. It's just day, after day, after day. And they're putting a lot of time and a lot of effort in. It's physically demanding. And you start hearing the chefs that get to about halfway through, they'll start saying, "This is the hardest thing I've ever done." And these are chefs who are working in hot kitchens and spending a lot of time on their feet. And they've come up through the ranks, and they'll all say, "This is as difficult as it gets."

For me, it's about being honest and about giving them really good feedback. It's not about power trips. In some of the early seasons, we would try to pit them against each other—and they all stopped doing that—which I think is much better because it was hard to sit back and watch them go after each other and not try to get to the bottom of what was really happening. I think we spent too much time on that and I think it detracted from the food. Luckily, I think the show has mirrored the industry and how it's changed. I think especially the last six or seven seasons, it's just become more and more about the food. And again, for the judges, it's always been. But I think for the contestants, sometimes they were trying to play a game. I think they're all realizing that game was not worthwhile even trying to play, and speak with your dish and speak with your food.

What are your earliest memories of food? How did your heritage inspire your first Italian restaurant, Vallata?

The name Vallata comes from the town that my father's family is from. It's in Campania, in Avellino, which is in the south. It's a little northeast of Naples. But growing up, food was always important. As a kid I was required to be at the table every night for dinner. My mother cooked most of the meals. Every now and then, my father would. But there's moments in my life that I could think of how important food was. And for instance, I didn't really think much about some of these things until the pandemic. I was doing a lot of Zoom cooking classes. And of course, you had to spend a lot of time talking as well as cooking, and I kept coming back to a few things.

One was, I have a passion for fishing as well, and started fishing with my grandfather when I was very young. I had two jobs in going fishing. One was, I had to clean all the fish and mostly crabs. We would go crabbing, occasionally catch fish, and also clamming. So I had to take care of all the fish. My other job was keeping my grandfather awake on the ride home. Looking back on it, it was the '60s. I was probably in the front seat without a seatbelt, and my job was to keep an eye on my grandfather on the way home. If I saw him nodding out, I would just nudge him. He would always have the same response, "I'm not sleeping, I'm just resting my eyes," and we always make it home.

And then, I would have to go into the basement and clean everything and then bring it upstairs, and then my mother and grandmother would cook. Whenever we would go, we would catch two bushels of crabs and clams. We had a ton of food, and this wasn't just a meal for the family, this was extended family and friends would come by. It was always 20 people around the table. We made crab. We would steam it the way you normally would steam crab, but then we would take the shell off, take out the gills, and then cook it in marinara sauce. We called it crab gravy. And then we would use that over linguini. And then if we had clams, they were usually just steamed with garlic, and olive oil, and some white wine, and some herbs. Fish was always just fried, if we caught fish.

This was a long meal. Because after you eat your linguini, you're picking crab. And you're picking crab for a couple hours. And the conversations would always start with the day, fishing, always the big fish that got away, and then it would go to sports, and family gossip, and politics. But politics in my family, we were all on the same page, so there was no arguments there. At a very young age, I saw the power that food had to bring people around the table, and I think that's what really attracted me to it.

There was the technical side of it. I found at a very young age that I was good at. It came very easy to me. I was fortunate when I was about 15, I would've been diagnosed with ADHD. All of my children are clinically diagnosed. I struggled reading recipes and trying to understand what the recipe was trying to tell me. When I was about 15, my dad brought a bunch of books home from the library at work. Now, I have no idea what Jacques Pépin's La Technique was doing at a county jail library — my father was a corrections officer — and yet, this book came home.

The introduction talked about how techniques and methods were really how you cook and once you learn these techniques that he set out in the book, then you can really become a cook. It just unlocked something in my brain. I'm just like, "Wow, so this long recipe about braising a lamb shoulder, all this text that I'm trying to get through, all they're telling me is braise the lamb shoulder? Well, now I know how to do that." So now I can braise a lamb shoulder, I could probably braise anything. It's all the same technique. And then you understand, at that point, when you could start flavoring different dishes and then how to combine stuff. It really changed my life. I got lucky. I found something that I was good at, something that I was passionate about and was able to pursue a career.

I think I was also probably at the right place at the right time. When I graduated high school and started cooking in kitchens, this was when American cuisine was coming about. Alice Waters was popularizing California cuisine in California. You had Jonathan Waxman at Michael's in Santa Monica, and your Larry Forgione at American Place in America. And you had a bunch of French chefs doing some great stuff as well, and Barry Wine at Quilted Giraffe. And so, American cuisine was really coming into its own. And I was there as a young cook in the middle of all of it. I was fortunate that I found this calling.

Touching on that, why did it take so long to open your first Italian restaurant?

I grew up working in French kitchens and learning French technique. When I was coming up, that's what you did. And a lot of Italian American chefs that I know, Tom Valenti and Alfred Portale, we didn't open Italian restaurants. We did French restaurants because that was our training. If you really look at Craft and what we were doing there, you can very easily say that it was Italian, but we never told anybody that it was Italian. A lot of the style of cooking was more akin to Italian cooking than French cooking. But Vallata was the first Roman trattoria. That's what I'm doing.

The restaurant originally was Craftbar. And then we moved Craftbar around the corner, and we turned the original Craftbar into our private dining room for Craft. It's right next door to Craft. And actually, the buildings are attached. We had just renovated the space, and, obviously, no private parties, especially coming out of COVID, and so we had the space, and it was like, "We have to do something here." It started out as a pop-up. I was like, "Let's do Italian. Let's do trattoria food." There was a book that I was inspired by, by a woman named Katie Parla, who just put out a second book. I think she lives in Rome. And I was really inspired by it. It was just very simple cooking and I was doing a lot of cooking at home. And I was like, "You know what? I like doing this food, so let's do it in a restaurant." And that's how it came about.

Why do you cook? For me, I love cooking because my grandmother is from Mexico and she taught me her traditions growing up and it connects me with my family and culture.

I think cooking at home is just that. In fact, right now, my wife's Jewish, we celebrate Passover, and I just put a brisket in the oven. We're braising it. And so, we're getting ready for the holiday. A lot of it is about family traditions. I do a big Christmas Eve feast of, well, it's about 13 fishes now. It's something we always look forward to.

Cooking in restaurants I think are very, very different than cooking at home. I cook very differently in both restaurants and at home. I think cooking at home is not only about adhering to tradition, but it's also creating new traditions that are carried down from, hopefully, generation to generation. I hope my children... I teach them these dishes, and they'll make them for their family as well, down the road when I'm long gone. It's about that tradition.

For me, cooking was also something that I was good at. I was good at something else when I was young. When I was very young, I was a competitive swimmer, and I was very good at a young age. When I was about 13, I stopped practicing as much, and I started, now, swimming in high school, and the kids that I beat when I was in the juniors, they were beating me. It bummed me out because I know if I just kept it up and kept practicing hard, I probably would've gone on and swam in college. I just messed up. And I said, "If I find something that I'm good at again, I'm not going to mess up. I'm going to really give it my all."

When I started cooking in restaurants, that's all I did. I read everything that I could read, whether it was all the cooking magazines — back then, there wasn't internet and you had to go out and buy books and if there was a certain chef and you wanted to see what they were doing, you had to go there. You couldn't just go on the internet and dial in. It was something that I just completely immersed myself in. After working 10, 12 hours a day, five days a week, I would go home and cook on Sunday, Monday. It was something I just loved. It was something also that came very easy. I never struggled with it. It all just made sense to me.

Nowadays, I cook for relaxation as well, especially if I have time. If I'm rushing and I have to get dinner on the table because it's getting late and the kids need to eat, then it's a bit of a hassle. But if I have a lot of time to just cook, I enjoy it. I really enjoy it. It's a lot of fun. I cook a lot at home, especially during the pandemic. I was cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner at home. And there's just something about it, especially if you're cooking every day at home.

I garden as well. And you start preserving stuff. And whatever you made for dinner, if there's something left over, you're turning it into lunch the next day. And so, there's a whole home economics piece to it too, that I just get a kick out of. Especially if you're that close to it, if you're doing it every day. Now I'm in the restaurants again, so I'm not here every day. There's just something about it that I just enjoy, but it's also about producing food too. I just love gardening and love being able to make a meal. If I go out fishing and I catch fish, and I'm getting produce out of my garden and everything that's on the table is something that I either grew or caught, that's a good day.

"Top Chef: World All Stars" airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on Bravo and streams next day on Peacock.