Don’t Eat Airport Shrimp

I remember the first time I caught an episode of “Good Eats”.  I think it was the chocolate cookie episode, though, it may have been the egg episode, now that I think about it. Regardless, it introduced me to the man – Alton Brown.  To call him a TV chef would be to insult him.  He’s a chef, yes – but also a food historian, food scientist, and overall geek.  I think I read a great description once that compared the show to Julia Childs meets Mr Wizard.  Yeah, I think you get the idea.

I loved his wit. I love the fact he explained why things happened in cooking – the science behind why certain foods when subjected to the right conditions do what they do.  And what happens when you don’t do it right.

It was funny, educational, and a perfect mix of DIY (yes, I think I could actually smoke salmon without a smoker now, thank you!)

Of course I had to follow the man along to his other ventures.  Now, we never miss an episode of Cut Throat Kitchen – even our kids are Alton lovers too.

About 6 months ago, G sent me an email – it was a forward. When I opened it, I discovered “Alton Brown Live” tickets.   We were going to see the man live!  Then we speculated what that could mean.  Would it be a cooking demo?  Would it be him reading from a book or something?  We had no idea.

We found out on Tuesday night when he came to Portland.

OMG is that man talented!!

He rapped for us, he sang for us, he shared stories of memorable moments of his life, and then he sang some more.  (Yeah, just don’t eat airport shrimp….or trout ice cream.)

One of the things you learn if watch Alton’s Good Eats is that Alton refuses to allow unitaskers in his kitchen. Unitaskers are tools that have one function and take up too much space to be worth keeping for that one function.  The exception? The fire extinguisher.  That’s his only exception.  Though, during the show with the help of the audience, he used a CO2 fire extinguisher to make ice cream using his special device.  Then he fed it to the audience member.

Later, he sang a song about being a child and wanting an easy bake oven.  He asked for a larger wattage of light bulb, melted it, then dreamed of making his own life sized easy bake oven with much hotter lights.  Yeah, he made one.  Then he mixed cold brewed coffee into the pizza sauce for a Portland twist before he and an audience member made pizza which included demonstrations on dough tossing, etc.  They put it into the oven made of theater lights – and 3 minutes later, the pizza was done.

It was pretty darn cool.   The whole thing.

There were stories that made the audience laugh until we almost cried.  And he had his Good Eats crew there too – all those bit players who added some bit role to the mix.

It was truly worth the wait to see the show.  And I was thankful we got decent tickets when we did because while they said it was not sold out – it was pretty damn close.

What has been also fun over the last few days is following him on Social Media as he eats his way through local places.  He found the good places and declared some of what he ate in Portland the best he has ever had.

Overall – I would recommend keeping an eye out for him coming to your area.  Because if you like this guy on TV, you will thoroughly love him more live.

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