Cook. Judge. Save some lives. Just another day for Tom Colicchio.

In addition to co-founding Gramercy Tavern and the Craft empire in Vegas and New York and being the head judge on Top Chef, Tom Colicchio can now add lifesaving bad-ass to his resume.

Saving anybody’s life is quite an accomplishment but Colicchio saved a James Beard-award-winning author Joan Nathan (of Jewish Cooking in America fame) — and in front of a star-studded audience including Bob Woodward and Rachel Maddow. (Last Rachel Maddow mention of the week. I promise.)

A blogger was also in the audience and wrote what she saw:

I was in the next room concentrating on a plate of lamb sausage.

Alice Waters flung herself into the banister behind me. She was

shouting. “Does anyone know the Heimlich maneuver?” She ran back. This

is not what you want to hear at a dinner party…Moments later, Waters appeared again. “It’s okay,”

she breathed. What happened in the interim was this: Tom Colicchio knew the Heimlich maneuver. And the Top Chef judge performed it.

I’m surprised that with all the celebrities at the event, no one got Nathan’s near-fatal experience on video.

Here from the Heimlich Institute is the copyrighted (yes, copyrighted) Heimlich maneuver.