Alton Brown Cooking Show
Part of the Celebrity Chef Show Series
At the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center
Nashville TN

Alton Brown, The Rock Star of Cooking?  You would think that after this fabulously staged and performed 90 minute show.  Alton Brown, well known for his long running show “Good Eats” on the Food Network ™, now tours America doing a cooking show.  Truth be told though (as Mr. Brown might put it) it is more of an upbeat comedy show featuring food.  The audience for this show was certainly as eclectic and diverse as you might see at a rock concert.  This show truly underscores American’s love affair with food and for food as theater.

The well done staging at the Gaylord Opryland Resort where I viewed the Nashville production looked more like a Rock-Star set than a set you would see on The Food Network or even the campy Iron Chef program.  Mr. Brown, attired in a Hawaiian Shirt, casual blond hair and semi-neat blond beard, looked more like one of the Beach Boys than a food expert.  The intro music was loud, the lights were electrifying and the tempo was as high energy as any rock concert you might want to attend. In this high-energy format Mr. Brown is unique in the culinary world as being in his element.

Mr. Brown demoed three “recipes” a cheese appetizer, a meat dish and a sorbet.  But these were prepared with his Mad-Scientist-Of-Food flair.

The first was a cheese appetizer dish.  This concoction was actually a “fresh” prepared whipped cheese whose main component was powdered aged-cheese and smoke and was dispensed using one of those metal squirt bottles most folks use to prepare fresh carbonated water for cocktails…you know the one’s powered with a nitrous-oxide cartridge.  While not very good eats it did allowed for a long rift of jokes about processed foods, nitrous-oxide, crackers and smoke-pipes. 

The next delicacy was barbecued beef-ribs, (didn’t anyone tell him he was doing this show in The South, where real barbeque-men don’t eat beef ribs?  It’s Pork, Alton, PORK.).  This dish was prepared using the exacting science of slow cooking – ala Mr. Brown style.  The cross-cut ribs were given a wet-rub marinade (again, Mr. Brown, it is The South…please, next time you come to town, use a dry rub!) and then sealed the meat in an industrial weight plastic vacuum bag.  This was immersed in the water bath at precisely 150-degrees for 18 hours.  Mr. Brown speculated, as only he could, or would, that this immersion technique, while a bit pricey and unusual is the wave of the future for ultra-slow cooking.  To get a gander of the kind of immersion cooker used here take a look at www.polyscience.com, they makes these gizmos for labs.

Next, and a real favorite with the numerous young adult fans here, was the sorbet preparation.  Specifically it was a Red-Bull™ sorbet.  Yes Sir, a sorbet of that rather obnoxious tasting “energy” drink so popular with the burn-the-candle-at-both-ends set.   For this Mr. Brown brought his interesting knowledge of chemistry to the party.  Apparently, as Mr. Brown was experimenting with preparing this item (based on a dare by one of his compatriots) he was having trouble making the frozen concoction smooth out, like the refined sorbet rather than a frozen slurpy drink from the local mall.  Ah, yes, chemistry knowledge!  What will depress the freezing point of the water allowing it to whip more finely while being super quick chilled by some frozen carbon dioxide, (a.k.a., dry-ice)?  Yes, of course alcohol, in this case a bit of Jagermeister.  The audience went wild, and the lighting guy went crazy, when Mr. Brown doused the sorbet ingredients mixing up in the high powered Mixmaster with the dry-ice and huge amounts of stage-smoke billowed out across the stage.  It was a sight even the greatest rock band would love!

GOOD SHOW, ALTON.

Mr. Brown is a quick on his feet.  He encouraged and took a lot of questions from the 60 or so onstage audience (who paid a well worth it premium to sit up close and personal) and from the 750 or so in the audience on the main floor.  Questions ranged from those about how he got started in this line of work, to what the maximum amount of Jagermeister the Red Bull sorbet might be able to hold.  One super hilarious moment came from a rather urban looking twenty-something, who deadpan asked Mr. Brown if, “He and the other chefs at The Food Network get together for pot-luck meals every now and then”.  Mr. Brown absolutely lost it at this question.  After a bit of quipping about the imagery of him and Giada DeLaurentiis private jetting over to visit with Mario, he noted; “Sir, I can’t even get a table at most of their restaurants!”  Another question shed some insight on to the roots of Mr. Brown’s fascination with science.  No, as some, including I speculated, he was not a NASA scientist before show biz, but had a love of chemistry gleaned as a young and rather mischievous boy growing up in rural Georgia, where his primary passion was making small explosive devices and surprising his neighbors.   Ah, Mr. Brown – quite a career turn around there I would say.

If you are an Alton Brown or cooking show aficionado or if you just love lighthearted high energy showmanship catch Mr. Brown’s show.  You might not get a good new recipe but you sure will get a belly full of laughs.

There are several shows in the Gaylord Opryland Celebrity Chef and cooking demo series over the year.  Check them out at http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylord-opryland/.   While I am sure most are not as humorous as this one is they all are entertaining and highlight America’s new passion, cooking for fun.