From his biography, Tom Colicchio was born in Elizabeth in New Jersey and he is a son to Beverly and to Thomas Colicchio. He has Italian ancestry on his two sides. He had been married to the filmmaker called lori silverbush from 2001 and he has now three sons. His wife, Lori waited the tables at the Gramercy Tavern. He had already a son called Dante.

Together with his partner Danny Meyer, he opened Gramercy Tavern in Gramercy Park neighborhood in Manhattan. It became the most popular restaurant in the New York City as reported by Zagat Survey in the year 2003 and in 2005. He had sold the interest in this restaurant in 2006 and he is no longer affiliated to the restaurant in any way. In 2001, he opened Craft Restaurant at one Block south of the Gramercy Tavern and one year later, he also opened the Craftsteak at the MGM Grand in the city of Las Vegas. In the year 2003, he opened his first sandwich shop under the name of Witchcraft. In 2010, he opened the Colicchio and sons with Riverpark. After the attack of 11 September, he was among the volunteers who were serving the food at the rescue works on Ground Zero.

He had written 3 cookbooks, together with Jeff Bridge and Raj Patel, they were in A Place At The Table documentary film. He was an executive producer of A Place At The Table.

Tom Colicchio started to work with Top Chef from 2006 and he was serving as its head judge. He is also a main consulting producer of the spin-off of Top Chef at Bravo called Top Chef Masters. He got Emmy Award of 2010 for the outstanding reality competition program since he was the executive producer for Top Chef and he was also appearing on it.

Colicchio also appeared at the fifth episode of first season of Treme at HBO where he was himself with other chefs Wylie Dufresne, David Chang and Eric Ripert. He had a new cameo for the Season 2 together with Ripert. In the year 2011, he made the cameos in the season 23 premiere episode for The Simpsons: The Falcon and The D’ohman and on The Smurfs. His net worth is 20 million dollars.