Award-winning chef and restauranteur Tom Colicchio, best known on television for Bravo’s Top Chef, will now be working with another NBCUniversal cable network: MSNBC.

The cable news network has named Colicchio its first food correspondent, charged with creating original on-air and online programming focused on “the politics, power and personalities of our nation’s food,” MSNBC said. The move is part of MSNBC’s larger strategy to cover a broader set of stories while investing in more original reporting from the field.

Colicchio will produce original reports and in-depth videos for Morning Joe, The Rachel Maddow Show and other leading MSNBC daytime and primetime series. Online, he’ll host Stirring the Pot, a new weekly series on Shift, MSNBC's new digital video platform, that will include digital documentaries and conversations about food and its impact on our daily lives.

Additionally, Colicchio will conduct a series of exclusive interviews, dubbed Everyone Eats, with a wide range of newsmakers such as sports personalities, elected officials, actors and star chefs.

Bravo’s Emmy Award-winning culinary competition series, Top Chef, which launched in 2006, was Colicchio’s first venture into TV. Since then he has worked on several other projects for the network, including its newest food series, Best New Restaurant, which debuted Jan. 21. (See: "Tom Colicchio: Best New Restaurant Breaks Ground.")

Colicchio has appeared on MSNBC as an occasional guest discussing sustainable farming, food policy, combating hunger and his advocacy for healthy food. In 2012 he collaborated with national food policy leaders to cofound Food Policy Action, a group that holds legislators accountable on votes that have an effect on food and farming. He has also been an outspoken voice on GMO labeling, the use of antibiotics in food sources and better anti-hunger policies.

As MSNBC’s food correspondent he will cover topics ranging from intensive farming to school lunches, over-fishing and food stamps, the network said.

“There are few voices – if any – that are as passionate as Tom Colicchio is when talking about the food we eat and how it impacts our families and communities,” Phil Griffin, MSNBC president, said. “[I’m] thrilled that Tom’s fresh perspective will be integrated across all our platforms, from TV to Shift to social media.”

Colicchio is the founder of several noted restaurants, including New York’s Gramercy Tavern, Craft (2002) and Colicchio & Sons (2010). The original Craft won The James Beard Foundation Award for “Best New Restaurant” in 2002, the same year Colicchio received The Bon Appétit American Food and Entertaining Award for “Chef of the Year.” He has since opened several Craft spinoffs (including Craftbar and Craftsteak) and another upscale New York eatery, Riverpark.

“In today’s world it is impossible to separate our food culture from the politics and policies that shape our choices as consumers and taxpayers, whether we’re aware of them or not," Colicchio said. "The one thing we all have in common is that everyone eats, and I’m excited to partner with MSNBC on a show that fosters healthy dialogue and speaks to this basic common truth.”

From Through The Wire: ‘Best New Restaurant’ Gets Into the Weeds Of the Culinary Life

There are a lot of cooking shows on TV, and a lot of restaurant shows. So what will draw viewers to Bravo’s new competition show Best New Restaurant, Through The Wire asked host, judge and executive producer Tom Colicchio, the accomplished restaurateur and Top Chef star.

“I don’t think there’s been a show that’s really given the viewer a good idea of what happens in a restaurant,” famed for Gramercy Tavern, Craft and other fine dining spots, said before a promotional event on Jan. 13 at his Riverpark in New York, which also featured a fun chat between Colicchio and New York magazine food critic Adam Platt (pictured).

Top Chef showed viewers how a chef creates, he said. Top Chef ’s “Restaurant Wars” episodes are “sort of a compressed version of opening night.” Rocco DiSpirito’s The Restaurant was more of a reality show.

“This is really nuts and bolts,” Colicchio said. “You bring 30 people into a restaurant and turn the camera on, you’ll see some stuff that I think people are going to really be interested in.”

Teams from 16 restaurants from across the country vie against each other two at a time. The last one standing gets an editorial feature in Bon Appetit, $100,000 and other goodies. It’s modeled on the U.K’s Ramsay’s Best Restaurant, and Gordon Ramsay also executive produces.

Many people fantasize about owning a restaurant, and think the real work in being a chef is creating the dish, Colicchio said. “You can go and buy The French Laundry Cookbook and you can stay home and perfect those dishes. Good luck putting that into a restaurant kitchen and expediting that food every single night for 200 people a night, or whatever it is, and doing it consistently.”

Viewers see the turmoil in the kitchen and the front of house, and how real diners respond. How does marketing a new show compare with marketing a new restaurant? “They have a bigger budget than a restaurant does!” was Colicchio’s first thought. Good point.

Best New Restaurant premieres Wednesday, Jan. 21, at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.

— Kent Gibbons