"tom colicchio" news and stories

Last year Slashfood launched the The 10 Hottest Men in the Food Industry and boy, did we hear about it! From commenters all over, everyone had an opinion. This year, we opened up the polls to our readers and let you decide who would make our final top 10 list.

Narrowing down 30 names to 10, after the jump, see who made the list again, and find out who, surprisingly, is our (possibly not-so-hot) hottest man of 2011.

Where do pro linebackers and pro chefs on the line meet? At the Taste of the NFL event, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary of cooking up a dinner of regional specialties, talking football, and raising funds for hunger-relief organizations. (So far, "Taste" has given local and national food banks more than $10 million.) This year's bash, to be held on February 5th, at the Forth Worth Convention Center, features chefs and players who have been with Taste of the NFL from the very beginning: "Top Chef" judge Tom Colicchio (above left), Olives' Todd English (above right) and "father of southwestern cuisine" and James Beard Award winner Stephan Pyles, among them.

Players like Hall of Famers Floyd Little (Denver Broncos), Bobby Mitchell (Cleveland Browns) and Jan Stenerud (Kansas City Chiefs, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings) have also been with Taste of the NFL since its first dinner in 1992, and will join the inaugural chefs to kick off the party.

Plus, there will be 32 more chefs at the event, one from each of the NFL cities, along with a player rep. Each chef will cook up signature dishes, and the players will chip in. Let's hope Chef Tom doesn't make this into a Quickfire event. Would you want to run up against the former Eagles' offensive tackle Jerry Sisemore in the walk-in, and fight over the last rib?

For ticket information and more details, visit TasteoftheNFL.com.

Here's where things get really wacky. Now that the stakes are sufficiently high (talented chefs sent home!) and the challenges have gotten progressively more bizarrely creative (tennis cook-offs!), you get the sense that the All-Stars who have made it this far are, well, cracking a little.

First it was the fact that they all had to compete against their "daddy" (more on that term of endearment later), Tom Colicchio, trying to beat his 8-minute entrée time for a high-stakes quickfire. In case you're wondering, the keys to besting Tom's speed in the kitchen are: Beg, borrow or steal some quick-cooking fish, and don't screw up the sauce. This meant Mike's branzino was seared to perfection, while Dale's attempt to do a pad thai -- well, it looked like one thick shoelace in a puddle of urine. And he admitted as much.

Then there was the now-patented "night before elimination challenge" montage, which in this case involved lots of bra-throwing, jalepeño juice in in the eyes, and the repelling of all of the boys back to their rooms. None of the women could understand why the chefs of the less-fair sex could "fiddle around with their diddlies" whenever they wanted, while one errant bra could produce a stampede.

There was good reason for all of the nervous nuttiness. These very Western chefs were assigned a daunting task: Cook dim sum for a room full of hungry New York City Asian-Americans. And the problem, it turned out, wasn't so much that they couldn't master the cuisine -- some of them did so splendidly -- but that they couldn't stop fussing over their little plates to get them out to the hungry diners.

Spoiler Alert: Read on only if you want to know the outcome of this "All-Stars" episode.

Atlantans who have developed a craving for the signature Hen-of-the-Woods mushrooms at Tom Colicchio's Craft will soon be left to forage for themselves. Colicchio has announced that he will close the Atlanta outposts of both Craft and Craftbar in early 2011 -- reportedly on Valentine's Day, no less.

The restaurant titan and head judge of Top Chef expanded his empire to Atlanta's tony Buckhead area just two years ago, and the city enthusiastically embraced Colicchio's philosophy of celebrating "the very best local and artisanal ingredients prepared simply and executed to perfection," which he had debuted at Craft's first incarnation in New York in 2001. Craft Atlanta received raves from local critics, including four-star reviews in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Alas, this must just be another of those casualties of a bum economy, right? Not so, according to the Journal-Constitution's website. It seems the bald and burly chef was no match for his new landlords, and the two sides couldn't reach an agreement to keep Craft and Craftbar in their current location, across from the Mansion on Peachtree hotel.

It may be more of a loss for Atlanta than Colicchio. After all, his burgeoning empire still includes New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Las Vegas. Who knows where he'll pop up next?

"Top Chef" judge Tom Colicchio has written in the current issue of Saveur of his love for Parker House rolls, an American classic invented at Boston 's Parker House Hotel in the late 19th century. This being the 21st century, his version is smaller and less flattened than the original, and the top is sprinkled with salt, but he serves them every evening at his eponymous Colicchio & Sons restaurant in Manhattan, and reports that guests often eat three or more. It got us to wondering what other breads have become associated with renowned chefs.

Here, and after the jump, a half-dozen cooks and their favorite breads:

David Chang, who founded the Momofuku restaurant mini-empire, where Asian-American fusion is the rule, is a big fan of northern Chinese bao – puffy and pale steamed flatbreads that can be folded over a variety of ingredients to make little sandwiches that at Momofuku he calls ssams. The most popular is made with pork belly, but the same bread is served on the side with the entrée of pork shoulder and raw oysters at his East Village restaurant Ssam Bar.