Tom Colicchio Reveals What The Bear Gets Right (and Wrong!) About Working in a Restaurant (Exclusive)

After more than 40 years working in restaurant kitchens, chef Tom Colicchio says he sees elements of his experience reflected on the FX series The Bear.

“What they really get right is the tension — especially during service — and they show you how things can go wrong,” says Colicchio, who spoke to PEOPLE on June 14 at the annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.

The Emmy Award-winning show, which returns for its third season on June 27, follows chefs Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) along with their family and friends as they race to turn their late brother's gritty Chicago sandwich shop into a fine-dining restaurant, appropriately called The Bear.

Colicchio, who has worked in and opened some of New York City’s buzziest and most popular restaurants, like Gramercy Tavern and Craft, says the intense back-of-house scenes, in particular, can mirror reality.

“The tension that you feel in the kitchen, the nerves, that's all real,” says the Top Chef judge, referring to a volatile scene in season 2 when ticket orders stream into the kitchen faster than the team can handle. "That happens.”

However, the chef says there are a few aspects of the scripted series that “bug” him.

“There's a couple of things that I look at and go, ‘That would never happen,’” says Colicchio, who will reunite with his fellow Gramercy Tavern alumni at a pop-up dinner event at the Food & Wine Classic to celebrate the restaurant's 30th anniversary.

“If you're a chef and you're opening up a restaurant, there is no way you're letting your sous chef write the menu. It's not going to happen! That's the only thing I kind of shake my head at," he says.

While Colicchio says some chefs may find that the fiery kitchen scenes hit "a little too close to home," he admits the emotional story arc and family dynamics can be raw and tense for him.

“The kitchen scenes are the kitchen scenes — I’ve lived it for 40 plus years,” he says, but the “generational trauma scenes” are “rough to watch.”

Despite having been a fixture on Bravo's Top Chef since the series premiered in 2006, Colicchio says he rarely tunes in to culinary competition shows.

“I don't watch any cooking shows, really. I don't watch reality cooking, I don't watch anything on the Food Network,” he says.

When asked whether he watches his own series, he was adamant in his answer. “I certainly don't want to watch myself,” says the chef, who will appear on the season finale of Top Chef on Wednesday, June 19.. “And my kids have no desire to watch it at all.”

Events at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen run until June 16. In May, the brand announced that the first Classic in Charleston will take place Sept. 27-29 in South Carolina.