Alton Brown stops in Madison for his larger-than-life farewell tour

There are venues Alton Brown simply had to skip on his (possible) farewell tour. 

“Alton Brown Live: Last Bite,” set to play Overture Center on April 16, features a “culinary demonstration … so large that we had to not play certain theaters because it wouldn’t fit on the stage,” the author and television personality said. 

The longtime host of “Good Eats,” Brown brought a direct, comedic yet informative approach to cooking on shows like “Cutthroat Kitchen,” “Iron Chef America” and “Food Network Star.” He’s the author of 11 books, including “Food For Thought: Essays and Ruminations,” published by Gallery Books in February.  

Brown’s explanations of food concepts involve shadow puppets, clever costumes and simple visual aids, like toy cars on a track. He popularized the refrigerator camera — a camera inside the back of a refrigerator — and other creative filming techniques to deliver culinary information in a playful way.

“The second that I encounter pretension, I want to burn down the house,” Brown said. “I become an anarchist. I think that science actually helps us avoid that.” 

The Cap Times spoke with Brown about what folks can expect from his show (there will be “more audience participation” than shows past), how AI and social media have changed food and why it just might be the right time for him to retire.  

How does this show compare to your first road show? 

I tried to stick to the format — which I think I invented — which I call the culinary variety show, which was very much born out of my love for television variety shows in the ’70s. There’s comedy, there’s music, there’s storytelling. There’s very strange, very large culinary demonstrations. There’s cooking, there’s audience interaction and involvement. 

There’s more science in this show, by about 25% I would say. There’s a little less music in this one, simply because our on stage demonstration is so large that it took up most of the room in the truck, so I couldn’t bring my band with me. I still do a song, but there’s not a big musical production.

How have you seen cooking media change since you started doing “Good Eats” in 1999?

I have a whole segment of the show that’s about AI. I am a bit agnostic on social media and food. On one hand, yes, I get that there are a lot of restaurants that have audiences now that might not have ever had the opportunity to get that. But I definitely feel that cooking itself is in decline because people don’t have the patience to read a recipe anymore. 

We’ve losing our ability to talk about food. We’re losing our ability to describe what food tastes like, because all we want to do is take pictures of it to put on Instagram. So I feel that we’re basically turning food into pornography. 

I worry about that, because I think in 20 years, we’ll have a new generation of cooks that for Thanksgiving are going to make a Cheeto and pickle stuffed red snapper suspended from dental floss in the oven over a simmering pot of Dr Pepper because the freak shows that are TikTok, the single most damaging piece of cultural software, culinarily, that I could ever even have imagined … they don’t want to engage, they don’t want to converse, they don’t want to think. They just want to watch. 

So what I see people cooking and how I see people reacting and responding to each other, I think we have forgotten so much of the hospitality. So I’m worried. It’s a good time for me to retire.

Is there something that you were once very dogmatic about that you’ve softened on, or maybe even totally flipped on over your career? Or have you always been right?

I don’t cook pasta in a gallon of water anymore. I cook it in a very small amount — it’s things like that. It’s technical things. 

I probably used to be more gung ho about meat replacements, and I’m not really anymore. There was this time when I was gung ho about organic, and I’m definitely not gung ho about organic anymore, because every system learns how to abuse things. 

I think I’m just becoming a grumpy old man, but I’m doing it across the board, you know? So I’m not taking it out on just one thing. I’m taking it out on everything. I think that simply, given time, you end up probably feeling a little less about a particular thing or a little bit more. It’s just a matter of turning the volume up and down. 

In some of your past interviews, you’ve talked about the role science has played in your understanding of food. Does understanding food come down to science? 

I don’t know that I’m going to say it comes down to science. It comes down to science for me, but science can get in the way. To just yell the word science and think that everything’s okay — that alienates as many people as it wins. 

I am not naturally a very good cook, so if I understand what’s going on from a scientific standpoint, I can help the food to do the things that I would like for the food to do. So for me, scientific understanding has great value. I tried to have a career based on sharing that and helping people to value it the way that I value it. But I don’t know that everybody does, and I don’t know that they need to. 

Is there anything that you want people to know going to your show?

I’d like people to know that, just like the shows that I produced, I am first and foremost attempting to entertain them. (Maybe) three days after the show, they suddenly realize they know something that they didn’t know, or they’re curious about something they wouldn’t be curious about — great.

But what I really want is for people to come enjoy two hours in a big room with a bunch of people they don’t know, because I think that’s valuable. 

I am an entertainer. People call me a chef; I am not. They call me a teacher; I am not. I’m an entertainer, and everything else is secondary to the entertainment. So that’s why I’m there, and hopefully families can come and have a really great time and leave the theater saying, “Wow, that was two hours well spent.”