Tom Colicchio

That just adds that extra something to it.

Oh, I have a funny, I have a little secret to tell you that I think you will enjoy is that I went to Tom Colicchio's house.

His trash can was full of Shake Shack boxes.

Happy to hear that.

And there was also the fact that some of the places knew that I was just going there for basically a reconnaissance mission, not to necessarily steal ideas, but I wasn't looking for a job.

Like, Colicchio knew, and Colicchio was still every day in the kitchen at Gramercy.

And Marco Canora was still there.

Wow.

I'll never be the chef of one of our restaurants, but I've really been very fortunate to be able to work with some extraordinary chefs.

Michael Romano, Tom Colicchio, Daniel Humm, Floyd Cardoz, Gabrielle Kreuter.

And today some great people like Tom Allen, Hillary Sterling, Mike Anthony.

Like I'm talking about a list of – it's like an incredible list of James Beard Award winning and remarkable human beings.

I had a brief stint in performance channel marketing, but just had this nagging idea that I had to go to culinary school and I had to work with food somehow.

So I went to culinary school in the city, started working in restaurants, worked at one of Tom Colicchio's spots in pastry.

That led me to a position on the team at the Martha Stewart Kitchen.

So I was kind of like some of the final years at the print magazine as a recipe tester and food editor.

It was not the best year to open a restaurant, but we still opened.

I was part of the wave in 86 of the new wave of restaurants, the new chefs, Tom Colicchio, Thomas Keller, the new American wave of chefs.

Everything changed when the internet arrived in the early 90s and 2000.

Now, people want to know about tamarind.

The only thing that dawned on me was you might or might not like it.

And then, so nine years later, you launch your second restaurant with Tom Colicchio, Gramercy Tavern.

And then a few years later, your next couple of restaurants.

And you realize in this process that you can't be everywhere at once.

Because the only thing I thought I had learned about my dad's bankruptcies were that they were attached to his expanding his business.

But I went ahead and did it anyway.

Tom Colicchio was a very, very gifted chef.

I wanted to work with him, wanted to open this restaurant.

out of time.

Do you know Tom Colicchio? He's a famous chef.

That's okay.

It's not your wheelhouse.

We had our first press release go out in May 2025.

From May to August, and in that same time, Tom Colicchio from Top Chef signed on to be our food and bev partner.

We had a wait list of 2,600 people.

And that was just in New York.