Anthony Bourdain: Tom Colicchio May Owe His Celebrity Chefdom to Cocaine, But I Owe Mine to Sexual Repression

Earlier, we noted how Tom Colicchio, in David Kamp's book, The United States of Arugula, theorized that the rise of celebrity chefs was due to a sort of cocaine "hangover" in the eighties. Pungent Top Chef guest judge Anthony Bourdain, self-admittedly no slouch in the hard drugs department, puts forth a different theory in his most recent book, The Nasty Bits:

“Why now, though? What the hell happened? What is wrong (or right) with society that even a son of a bitch like me gets a damn TV show? Why do people even care about chefs? What changed?....Maybe people just aren’t fucking enough. There was a definite upsurge in the fortunes of chefs with the early eighties discover that indiscriminate sexual activity can kill you. Certainly people seem to be eating more—evidence, perhaps, of sublimated desire.”

Well, having been raised in the marble-titted embrace of the Mother Church, we know which explanation we believe.

The Nasty Bits sheds light not only on the rise of "food porn," but also on Chef Colicchio's musical tastes and after-hours habits:

“Tom Colicchio of Craft says that after work he goes out to New York's AlphabetLounge when Toke Squealy, the band of his guitar teacher, Alan Cohen, plays, orto Arlene's Grocery 'to check out [his] friend Becca's band, Thin Wild Mercury.'But, he adds, 'I don't think it has any effect on what or how I cook. But it does provide time away from thinking about food or myrestaurants.'”

No wonder he doesn't let the Top Chef contestants, as he admitted on his Bravo blog, have access to their iPods.

After reading that distinctly unnasty bit about Chef Colicchio in the Bourdain book, we ran across Chef Colicchio's official portrait on the Craft Restaurant website (see above), and had us a good laugh. The thing makes him look like a hybrid of (1) a gay leather-daddy bear, (2) a Meatpacking District club bouncer, (3) a James Bond villain intent on world domination, and (4) a former rugby player turned Cockney hoodlum in a Guy Richie film. That's definitely a man who doesn't know the first thing about sexual repression.

Tom Colicchio: I Owe My Celebrity Chefdom to Cocaine!

Well, not really, but we can never resist parodying tabloid headlines.

This is what he really said in David Kamp's The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, which, with its dishy stories and Julia Child “stiff cock” anecdotes, quickly became our favorite food book of the year:

“I think chefs and restaurants became what they are today because when people finally woke up from the cocaine buzz of the eighties, they had to find another form of entertainment. The club scene was dying out, and restaurants became the new entertainment, the new opiate.”

The book also contains Chef Colicchio’s heartwarming reminiscences of being at a boozy meeting of Chefs from Hell, Unicyclists, and Acrobats—an informal club that also included superchef Thomas Keller among its members—“and laughing so much I actually threw up.”

But that’s not all. You’ll also find the answer to why Thomas Keller, who used to be Chef Colicchio’s boss at Rakel in New York City, will never be a guest judge on Top Chef—“Colicchio says he was ousted by Keller in a ‘You can’t fire me, I quit!’ situation, even though the two were good friends.”

And if you order in the next ten minutes, you’ll also be privy to Chef Colicchio’s admission that “the possibility of even a single failure ‘scares the hell out of me. I wake up every morning asking myself, “What the hell am I doing this for?” he says. “Do I need another restaurant? Do I need a restaurant in Dallas? Christ!” But at a certain point—I don’t know if you get addicted to the deal, but you start chasing these deals.’”

Revel as you watch Chef Colicchio bitchslap Alice Waters over a pig in Oregon! Marvel as you discover the genesis of Craftsteak! Ooh and aah at Chef Colicchio's comparisons of the 90s culinary scene to the Harlem Renaissance!

And as a special bonus, you’ll get an account of legendary New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne’s drunken dinner “at the starchy Cosmopolitan Club[, when] Claiborne, soused again, broke a lull in the conversation by suddenly blurting out, ‘When I die and they autopsy my brain, do you know what they’ll find?’ After a nervous silence, he answered his own question: ‘Pubic hair!’ Mrs. Catledge was not amused.”

Mrs. Catledge may not have been amused, but you certainly will—Order your copy today!