“Top Chef” Star Tom Colicchio Thinks Trump Is in for a Huge Surprise

And food workers have the might to fight back, the renowned chef said.

Tom Colicchio, left, is best known for his fancy restaurants and role on Top Chef. But he's also an anti-hunger activist—here he is at DC Central Kitchen, which provides food, skills training, and jobs to low-income Washingtonians. <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dccentralkitchen/3993798712">DC Central Kitchen</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

For about a decade, Tom Colicchio has been best known for the affable but no-nonsense figure he cuts as a judge on the hit Emmy-winning reality TV show Top Chef. He also runs a restaurant empire that spans Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami Beach, centered on his landmark Manhattan restaurant Craft, renowned for its devotion to top-quality ingredients and mastery of technique

But this bona fide celebrity chef is also a true soldier in food policy fights. Back in 2012, he co-founded Food Policy Action, a group that pushes for more worker-friendly and environmentally friendly national food policy. And this year, he helped launch Plate of the Union, an effort to “amplify the voice of millions of Americans who care about food and farm issues” during the presidential election. To get a grip on the concept of President Donald Trump and what it might mean for our plates, I interviewed Colicchio for Bite podcast.

I asked him about Trump’s vow to expel millions of Mexican immigrants, the lifeblood of restaurant kitchens and farm fields. Colicchio said the GOP’s take on immigration is essentially cynical—the party is beholden to business interests, including big restaurant chains, that rely on migrant labor. But it also balks at giving the workers who feed the nation a path to citizenship, for fear that they’ll end up voting for Democrats.

With his bucket of KFC on his private plane, Trump was sending a message, Colicchio argues: “‘The cultural elites are making fun of your fried chicken and your fast food, and I’m embracing it; I’m one of you.'”

“That really is what all this [Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric] is about,” he said. “Farmers in this country, they need immigrant labor, they rely on it,” he said. “I believe when Trump takes a look at immigration and who needs it, he’s going to change his tune very quickly.”

He also took a poke at the the National Restaurant Association, the trade group that represents Colicchio’s own industry, for lobbying to keep the minimum wage low, and name-checked ROC United, a group that advocates higher pay and better conditions for restaurant workers. (We interviewed ROC’s executive director, the excellent Saru Jayaraman, for Bite back in April.)

Colicchio spoke of the need to broaden the movement to reform the food system to be less elitist and more inclusive. He argued that the iconic photo of Trump digging into KFC with a knife and fork on his private jet was a conscious effort to exploit this elite reputation. Trump was sending a message, Colicchio argues: “This is okay—the cultural elites are making fun of your fried chicken and your fast food, and I’m embracing it; I’m one of you.”

The chef issued a stirring defense of anti-hunger policies, noting that Trump had avoided promising to cut social programs, a smart move given that a large portion of his targeted white working-class constituency relies on them. Colicchio said that while Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.) has been salivating for years at the prospect of slashing food aid programs, there’d be “serious pushback” against efforts to cut them.

Toward the end of the conversation, I realized I was talking to a Manhattan business magnate with strong political opinions and a potent reality TV platform. Since that all sounded extremely familiar, I asked Colicchio whether he’s ever thought of running for president. After a hearty laugh, he said that “unlike some other people on reality TV, I don’t believe I’m actually qualified to do the job.” But he added that “there’s a part of me that would love to run” for a congressional seat on Long Island, where he has a home. Colicchio stressed that he probably won’t, because he has two young children as well as several restaurants to operate. But he sounded quite a bit more open to the possibility than he has in the past—just a year and a half ago, he categorically rejected the prospect of running for Congress.

Bite is Mother Jones‘ podcast for people who think hard about their food. Listen to all our episodes here, or subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, or via RSS.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate