Erin Thursby
Food nerds rejoice, Alton Brown is coming to town for his Edible Inevitable Tour! Most of us know him from his long running show Good Eats, and his time as a host of reality TV cooking shows, most recently Cutthroat Kitchen.
Good Eats showed folks the fun side of culinary science, something that Alton is also doing with his live tour, although in a more spectacular manner. EU Jacksonville had a chance to talk to Alton Brown about food and his upcoming show at the Florida Theatre Sunday, February 8th at 7pm.
Alton describes the Edible Inevitable Tour as “a live theatrical culinary variety show. There’s a little bit of everything: puppets, comedy, audience interaction, I’m doing some of my food songs…it’s a packed 21/2 hrs not only fun for people that are into food, but also I’ve had a lot of people that have been drug along by fans—family members and friends, then afterward they say ‘wow, I’m not really into food and I have no idea who you are, but that was fun.’..It’s very specifically a family show, it’s constructed for people of all ages. Bring the kids, bring the grand-folks…”
Alton says he hasn’t had a lot of food in Jacksonville before, but that he asks fans for their recommendations on twitter and Facebook before they play in a city. His team tabulates the recommendations and they choose the top in particular categories and then Alton eats only at those places. He was mum on what they might be, since the votes for Jacksonville eateries was in the thousands and they hadn’t tallied them completely yet. They take pictures at each place and post them on social media.
We were most curious as to why the first few rows have ponchos provided to some audience members. The answer from Alton is that the best seats in house can also be the messiest seats in the house: “During the show, I do a couple of very, very large unusual food demonstrations and one of them tends to create a fair amount of airborne particulate matter. In some theaters, depending on the airflow, that particulate matter has the annoying habit of falling onto the audience. So we’re making sure that the first couple of rows has protection.”
For tickets go to http://floridatheatre.com/ or call (904) 355-2787
According to Alton Brown
Most Annoying Cooking Trend: “I’m really over Sriracha hot sauce.”
Best Recent Cooking Trend: “I consider the cocktail world very much a part of the culinary world…the trend towards wine-based cocktails. I think that’s really exciting because it leads to whole other complexity of flavors and creative opportunity…You don’t always have to have a hard spirit as a base for a cocktail.”
The most surprising thing he’s ever eaten: “I’m an omnivore so I don’t know that there’s anything that surprised me. I’ve always known what I was putting in my mouth…The fact that I enjoyed curried lamb eyes was a bit surprising, but they’re not something I want to have every day.”
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