Tom Colicchio’s Grub Street Diet

Tom Colicchio is in the midst of celebrating some important milestones: His seminal cookbook, Think Like a Chef, just turned 25, and his restaurant, Craft, will hit that same mark next year. (Top Chef, meanwhile, debuted nearly 20 years ago; Colicchio just got back to town after shooting the latest season.) Both the book and the restaurant helped to define the New American cooking movement of the early 21st century, but these days, Colicchio is taking a stand against one of the era’s most enduring developments: small plates. “This whole idea of six people putting the food in the center of the table and scraping it off onto their own little share plate is just a terrible way to eat,” he says. “If I order something I want to eat, but they put it in the center of the table — by the time I get it, it’s just a smudge on the plate. What am I gonna do with that?” He compares the “everyone shares everything” approach to a buffet: “That’s what you’re doing — order your own appetizer! Eat it. And if you’re still hungry, order another one,” he says. “Share plates make me crazy.”

Sunday, October 5
My morning started around six to take the dog out. She’s a flat-coated retriever named Tiki, short for Tikvah, which is “hope” in Hebrew. I live in Fort Greene, so I took her to the park. We went for a nice long walk, threw a ball. She played around with some other dogs, and I put headphones in so I didn’t have to talk to anybody.

On the way home, we stopped at Bagel World on DeKalb, which is three blocks away. I’m not interested in traveling for bagels. The difference between the best bagel in New York and this bagel is negligible enough for me not to go out of my way. Tiki sat outside and patiently waited for her plain bagel, which she absolutely loves.

There are four of us in the house — my wife, two youngest children, and me — so I got six bagels: two plain, two sesame, one everything, and one salt. I also picked up some pastrami lox. Probably 30 years ago, I did my own version of this. I didn’t call it lox, but I liked the flavor. When I brought this home, my wife said, “Please don’t get it anymore. Get regular lox.”

At 11:30 a.m., I had yogurt with maple syrup. There is a lot of yogurt and Ka’chava chocolate smoothies in my diet: Since January, I’ve lost 40 pounds. I did it through a combination of swimming, morning walks with the dog — I walk probably about two and a half miles between taking out the dog, bringing her home, and then walking to the gym and swimming — and modern medicine. I know the food industry and the liquor industry have really taken it on the chin with some of these new weight-loss medications. There are far fewer calories going into people, and therefore a lot less people eating out. In my business, I’m already looking at cutting portions way down and dropping the prices, too. Food is really expensive these days, but if people are eating less and still want to enjoy a bunch of things, I think portions need to come down.

What I’ve found is instead of sitting down to dinner and eating a large portion in seconds, I have a small portion, and then I’m done. And I’m drinking a lot less, which is also an effect of the medication. I went from drinking a glass of wine or two pretty much every day — and, during the pandemic, it was cocktails, a full bottle of wine, after-dinner drinks. But I find that now I’m maybe drinking half a glass of wine once or twice a week. I’m just not as hungry, and I’m not picking in between meals.

If I’m home for dinner, I’m cooking every night. During the pandemic, I was home for a year and a half straight, making breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I sat down to eat with the family every night, and I got used to it, and I don’t want to give that up. I like the ritual of sitting down with the kids, when you can ask about school. They’re not very forthcoming with any answers, but at least you can ask them.

For dinner, I cooked top round steak marinated in soy and Worcestershire sauce. I don’t do a lot of ultraprocessed foods, and I don’t eat fast food at all. I’m not one of those guys who needs a burger once a week. If I eat red meat, I’d rather have a steak than a burger.

I broiled the meat with black-garlic balsamic from Lindera Farms. Plus roasted peppers, red onions, yellow potatoes, sautéed shiitakes — all from Greene Grape — as well as steamed broccoli rabe from Mr. Mango.

One glass of Château Fontanès Pic Saint-Loup rouge, and dessert was more maple yogurt.

Monday, October 6
I was up at six, and at about 6:30, I had a chocolate-banana shake — like I do most mornings — and plain black coffee. We have a house on the North Fork of Long Island, and the coffee we typically have in the refrigerator is from North Fork Roasting Co. It’s roasted in-house and is really good.

I’ve cut back on coffee, but I still drink four or five cups before I leave the house. When I was young, I had an aunt who always had espresso happening at her house. She was like, “You want to drink coffee?” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” You know, I wanted to be an adult. She said, “Okay, well, you’re not drinking it with sugar and milk. This is how you’re drinking it.” Black is the only way I drink it now.

I took Tiki for a walk, and I had some yogurt with granola when we came back. After that, I went to work. My offices are right above Craft. I got there around 12 and didn’t eat anything. Well, I may have grabbed a piece of our focaccia, okay? I may have.

I don’t spend a whole lot of time cooking meals for my family at home. I’m probably faster with a knife than most people, but I’m not looking at recipes that take way too much time. I’m not measuring anything out. So all the things that slow you down in the kitchen, I don’t do. When I get home at six o’clock, I’ll chill out a little bit, feed the dog. sit down for ten minutes, and then I’ve got to start cooking — I want to get the meal on the table by seven or 7:30. So it’s not fancy; it’s efficient.

For dinner, I made roasted chicken. It wasn’t high-caliber cuisine. I’ll literally spatchcock a chicken — a fancy name for taking its back out and laying it flat — and put it in the oven. I put salt and pepper on it, and that’s it. There’s nothing to it.

Often, I’m trying to cook everything in one pot or pan. So if I get a roasting pan, maybe I’ll do potatoes, fennel, red onion, sliced lemon, and rosemary. I started the chicken in the pan, and when it was about a third of the way done, I took it out, put the vegetables in, and put that all back in the oven to roast together. It always comes out of one pan, done. I added a salad, and that’s it.

I had a glass of the same red wine as the night before, and then more yogurt with maple syrup for dessert. I used to do a ton of ice cream — I would crush a pint a night — and I try not to do that anymore.

By 10:30, I’m looking to wind down and go upstairs. My ritual to sleep is listening to a historical podcast. Tonight, it was something about Teddy Roosevelt. And I took a very mild hit of THC, not in edible form, but a pipe. That shut my brain off, and the podcast shut my brain off, and I fell asleep within ten minutes.

Tuesday, October 7
If this were the summer, I’d be up at 1:30 in the morning because I’d be going fishing and leaving the dock at two. The summer is a whole different routine. But this morning, I was up at six.

After my chocolate-banana smoothie and yogurt, I took the train to work and tasted some homemade stracciatella in Vallata to check on it. Stracciatella is like mozzarella, chewy when it’s first made and a little salty, but then it starts to mellow out. We make it fresh, so I grabbed a little bit.

I also had a piece of fresh focaccia. We make it here at the restaurant, and it changes depending on the season. In the summer, it’s tomato, or it could be potato. In the fall, it’s a lot of olive oil, herbs, a good amount of sea salt and just a great, airy texture — and it’s always around, so it’s easy to grab and eat.

I got downstairs too late for family meal at Craft, so I went home and had leftover greens from the night before. The kale, the fennel, and leeks, and we had some mushrooms. I threw that in the microwave and ate it, and that was dinner.

Wednesday, October 8
Breakfast was a smoothie. Walked the dog, went for a swim, and then at home, before going into work, I had two eggs cooked in chile crisp, on a tortilla, with black coffee.

I should say that there is a lot that I ate that isn’t in here. At work, it’s my job to go to every station and check on things. So I’m constantly eating bits and pieces. It’s not a lot, but if someone’s roasting broccoli, I’m going to take a little piece. If we’re serving duck breast, we cut the very ends off so it lies flat on the plate, and I’ll grab a piece of that to make sure it’s seasoned properly.

Dessert, too: I will go in occasionally and check the sorbets and ice creams to make sure the textures are right — I had some gelato on Wednesday.

Dinner was grilled chicken thighs at the family meal at Craft. It used to be that we would serve family meal with all the staff sitting around the table, and we would talk business. But you can’t do that anymore — labor laws forbid us from talking about work during a meal. So we can talk about anything else, but no business. I’d gotten down to family meal late, so I just grabbed what was left. I ate the chicken standing up while the kitchen was getting ready for service.

I took a yellow cab home around nine o’clock, and I think the kids must have had pizza, because there was a leftover slice of pepperoni in the refrigerator. I put it in the toaster oven. Was it any good? Pizza is either good or great — there is no bad. Pizza is always good.