Tom Colicchio Admits He Initially Said ‘No’ to ‘Top Chef’: ‘I Am Not Interested in Doing This at All’ (Exclusive)

Tom Colicchio says he first turned down ‘Top Chef’ before joining for all 23 seasons. He and Gail Simmons reflect on how the show has evolved.

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NEED TO KNOW

Tom Colicchio initially declined to join Top Chef but reconsidered after a funny encounter involving Bobby Flay

Fellow judge Gail Simmons was also nervous about joining the show after being recruited through her former job but now reflects on the important legacy of the show after 23 seasons

Kristen Kish also says being on television wasn’t part of her plan as the judges reflect on their 2026 Emmy nominations

Though he’s a mainstay on Top Chef now, Tom Colicchio had no interest in being on the show at first.

The judge, who has been with the show for all 23 seasons, tells PEOPLE about how he was recruited for the role despite initially not wanting to do the show.

Colicchio says it started when a showrunner approached him. “She said, ‘We’re doing this show. We think you’d be great.’ And I was like, ‘No,’” he recalls.

“I was like, ‘I am not interested in doing this at all,’” he says, adding that the team called him back and asked if they could have someone get him on camera, which they did at his restaurant.

“Two days later, they said, ‘Can you come up to LA for a screen test?’ I said, ‘I really don’t wanna do this show,’” he shares. He ended up sending them a documentary done on his restaurants.

“They called back and said they wanna make an offer, and so I was like, ‘All right, fine,’” he says.

The chef and restaurateur says that his “calculation” that resulted in him joining the show involved another cooking competition show star.

“I’d go to these food festivals, and it was book signing time, and I’d sit next to Bobby Flay. He would sign 200 copies of his book and I would sign 20 of mine,” he says. “He was on TV. So I was like, ‘You know what? Let’s do this.’”

Now, Colicchio says he’s the “only one who has ever been in every single episode” of the hit series.

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He says that the show has learned from its long history, including improving casting and making challenges “more serious,” as well as growing in production size from a 40-person crew to about 150 people.

One constant, he says, is that for the judges, “it’s always been about the food.” He adds that his role has always been to convey a “serious conversation about food” to the viewers.

“It’s only through our conversation they can understand what the chefs are doing,” he says.

Fellow judge Gail Simmons tells PEOPLE that she was also not particularly inclined to do the show at the start.

She was recruited because she worked at Food & Wine magazine, which partnered with Bravo to get the show started.

“They said, ‘If we like one of your editors, we’ll put them on the judges panel,’” she recalls. “I was not enthusiastic about doing this. I had no idea what I was in for.”

Simmons says she had the media training and food knowledge needed for the role, but she was worried about “the television part.”

“I had no idea how it would come across,” she says. “Tom and I talk about it all the time — we sat down for that first episode and our hearts were pounding.”

She adds, “Our fear wasn’t that we would be a failure to the world. Our fear was that we’d be a failure to our industry. That we would be, you know, considered a joke.”

Colicchio “was worried because, not only did he have a business to run that he wanted to represent, but he was a pretty known entity already,” she says.

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Now, after 23 seasons, Simmons reflects on the impact of the show.

“I wanna say we were lucky, but it was more than luck. Top Chef was founded and started by an incredible group of producers,” she says, adding that the team today continues to understand and represent the culinary world in an engaging way.

She says, “every season at this point is like a bonus. I don’t take it for granted.” She notes, however, that she hopes for a “quarter century milestone” with a potential season 25.

“I think we have so many more stories to tell,” she says. “We have so many more young, capable, amazing young chefs that we wanna introduce to the world.”

As for Kristen Kish, who started on the show as a judge and host three seasons ago, Colicchio says that she was “nervous as hell” for her first episode and has done a “great” job.

Top Chef is nominated for Outstanding Reality Competition Program at the 2026 Emmys, along with receiving nominations for directing, hosting and casting.

Kish tells PEOPLE that being at the Emmys or other similar events can feel surreal.

“TV was never part of my plan,” she says. “It just happened. And so, it catches me off guard every single time I find myself in one of these ‘Hollywood’ spaces…I used to maybe cook for them. Maybe if I was lucky.”

Colicchio says that the Emmy nominations illustrate how they “have a show that’s worthwhile.”

“You put so much effort and hard work into every season, and it starts way before we start shooting, and to know that you’re doing something that’s worthwhile that people can really relate to, care about, I think on the technical side, knowing our production value, how high it is and how much we put into it, I think it’s great to have your work recognized,” he says.

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