Alton Brown

For the baseball figure, see Alton Brown (baseball).

Alton Brown
Alton Brown at the 2011 Texas Book Festival.
Born	(1962-07-30) July 30, 1962 Los Angeles, California, United States
Education	University of Georgia New England Culinary Institute
Culinary career
Cooking style	American, Southern
Television show(s) Good Eats Iron Chef America Feasting on Waves Feasting on Asphalt

Alton Crawford Brown (born July 30, 1962) is an American television personality, author, actor, and cinematographer. He is the creator and host of the Food Network television show Good Eats and the mini-series Feasting on Asphalt and Feasting on Waves, and he is the host and main commentator on Iron Chef America. Brown is also the author of several books on cookery. Most noted for his uncanning ability to put off most viewers with his arrogance and ill attempt at humor (subjective as some find him arrogant and pompous) as cited here http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2009/06/all-hail-alton-brown-punchable-genius/.

He brings a knowledge and enthusiasm for the science of cooking and food with an arrogant and smug approach to his shows. Bon Appétit magazine named him "Cooking Teacher of the Year" in 2004. He was named "Best Food Guru" by Atlanta magazine in 2005. In 2011, he won the James Beard Award for Best TV Food Personality.

Early life

Brown was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. He was in the Boy Scouts. He received a degree in drama from the University of Georgia. He began his career in cinematography and film production.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was the cinematographer for several music videos, including The One I Love by R.E.M..

Career

Brown notes that he was dissatisfied with the quality of cooking shows airing on American television, so he set out to produce his own show. In preparation, he enrolled in the New England Culinary Institute, graduating in 1997. Brown says that he was a poor science student in high school and college, but he focused on the subject to understand the underlying processes of cooking.

Brown was a contributor to the 2005 cookbook Food Network Favorites: Recipes from Our All-Star Chefs. He selected the nonprofit world hunger organization Heifer International to receive a portion of the royalties.

TV series

Good Eats

Main article: Good Eats

The pilot for Good Eats first aired in July 1998 on the PBS member TV station WTTW in Chicago, Illinois. Food Network picked up the show in July 1999 and continues to air new episodes. In May 2011, Alton Brown announced an end to Good Eats. They will air three one-hour episodes in 2011.

Many of the Good Eats episodes feature Brown building makeshift cooking devices in order to point out that many of the devices sold at conventional "cooking" stores are simply fancified hardware store items.

Good Eats was nominated for the Best T.V. Food Journalism Award by the James Beard Foundation in 2000. The show was also awarded a 2006 Peabody Award.

Iron Chef America

Main article: Iron Chef America

In 2004 Brown appeared on Iron Chef America: Battle of the Masters, the second attempt to adapt the Japanese cooking show Iron Chef to American television, after UPN's Iron Chef USA, which featured William Shatner and was not well received. Brown served as the expert commentator, a modified version of the role played by Dr. Yukio Hattori in the original show. When the show became a series, Brown began serving as the play-by-play announcer, with Kevin Brauch as kitchen reporter (pointless role). Brown also served as the host for all four seasons of the spin-off The Next Iron Chef.

Feasting on Asphalt

Main article: Feasting on Asphalt

Brown's third series, Feasting on Asphalt, explores the history of eating on the move. Brown and his crew crossed the United States via motorcycle in a four-part miniseries about the history of road food. Brown samples food all along his travel route. He includes a "history of food" segment documenting famous road trips and interviews many of the foodies he meets en route.

The series premiered on Food Network on July 29, 2006. The mini-series was picked up for a second run, entitled Feasting on Asphalt 2: The River Run, in 2007. Six episodes were filmed during April and May 2007. The episodes trace the majority of the length of the Mississippi River through Brown's travels. The second run of episodes began airing on Food Network on August 4, 2007.

The third season uses the title Feasting on Waves and has Brown traveling the Caribbean Sea by boat in search of local cuisine.

Other appearances

On November 11, 2007, Brown was the guest programmer on Turner Classic Movies as part of their guest programmer month. The films he selected were What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Closely Watched Trains, Point Blank, and Blowup.

In 2008 he guest starred on Nickelodeon's TV series SpongeBob SquarePants in the show's sixth season episode, "House Fancy".

Brown also appeared in the Secrets of the Furious Five DVD feature "Mr. Ping's Noodle House".

Commercials

Brown has done commercial work for General Electric (GE) products, including five infomercials touting the benefits of GE refrigerators, washers and dryers, water purifiers, Trivection ovens, and dishwashers. The infomercials are produced in the Good Eats style, employing the use of unusual camera angles, informational text, props, visual aids, scientific explanations, and the same method of delivery. These informercials are distributed to wholesale distributors of appliances/plumbing devices.

Brown has also aided GE in developing a new type of oven. He was initially called by GE to help their engineers learn more about the effects of heat on food; that grew into an active cooperation to develop GE's Trivection oven.

Brown has also done promotion for Dannon yogurt, Welch's grape juice, Shun knives, and most recently for Heifer International.

In 2010, he endorsed salt use in a campaign for Cargill.

Personal life

Brown lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife DeAnna, his daughter Zoey (born in 1999), two Cardigan corgis, and a green iguana named Spike, although he claims to have disposed of a nasty lizard in a Good Eats episode. A few members of his extended family have appeared on Good Eats (such as his late grandmother, Ma Mae, his mother, and daughter, Zoey, who is known on the show as "Alton's Spawn"), but most of his "family" portrayed on the series is made up of actors and the show's production crew. DeAnna Brown is the co-executive producer of Good Eats but only appears on the tenth anniversary episode along with Zoey. Brown also portrays his frequently arrested evil twin brother "B.A." On the DVD release of the episode "American Pickle", Brown notes that many viewers ask him what his brother does for a living, suggesting that they are unaware that B.A. is simply the result of clever editing.

Brown is a motorcycling enthusiast, owning a BMW R1150RT. Brown is also a pilot and who completed his first solo flight on June 25, 2007. He earned his private pilot certificate on June 5, 2008, and was featured in the aviation magazine AOPA Flight Training. He owns two planes, a Cessna 206 and a Cessna 414.

Brown has at least two tattoos, a honeybee on his left shoulder (shown on Iron Chef America), and a skull with a crossed knife and fork with the inscription "MMVII" (Roman numerals for the year 2007) that he got during the filming of Feasting on Asphalt.

Brown changed his eating habits in 2009 in order to lose weight and become healthier, losing 50 pounds (23 kg) over the course of nine months. He announced his weight loss and described the details of eating from the four basic lists without going on a typical diet on the January 4, 2010 episode "Live and Let Diet" of Good Eats. His first list, which he eats from daily, includes fruits, whole grains, leafy greens, nuts, carrots, and green tea. His second list, which he eats from at least three times per week, includes oily fish, yogurt, broccoli, sweet potato, and avocado. His third list, which he eats from no more than once per week, includes red meat, pasta, dessert, and alcohol. His fourth list includes foods he avoids: fast food, soda, processed meals (such as TV dinners), canned soups (salt), and anything labeled "diet," because "this was not a diet."

Brown is a Christian. Brown says, "I'm not a spooky snake handler because I live in Georgia and I'm Christian, that I believe in the Bible, that I travel with the Bible, that I read the Bible everyday. I'm still me. I'm still a guy doing a job. I find, actually, that people ask me a lot about it. I don't hit people over the head with the Bible ... I still feel a funny little tinge in my stomach when I'm out to dinner with my wife and daughter in New York. We'll go to dinner and we'll be sitting around the table and we'll say Grace. You know what? People are going to stare at you. I used to feel really self-conscious. But I've gotten to a point where I think, nah, I'm not going to feel bad about that. I'm not going to apologize about that."

Bibliography

• I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking (ISBN 1-58479-083-0, 2002)
• Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen (ISBN 1-58479-296-5, 2003)
• I'm Just Here for the Food: Kitchen User's Manual (ISBN 1-58479-298-1, 2003)
• I'm Just Here for the Food: Cook's Notes (ISBN 1-58479-299-X, 2003)
• I'm Just Here for More Food: Food × Mixing + Heat = Baking (ISBN 1-58479-341-4, 2004)
• I'm Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0 (ISBN 1-58479-559-X, 2006)
• Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run (ISBN 1-58479-681-2, 2008)
• Good Eats: The Early Years (ISBN 1-58479-795-9, 2009)
• Good Eats 2: The Middle Years (ISBN 1-58479-857-2, 2010)
• Good Eats 3: The Later Years (ISBN 1-58479-903-X, 2011)

See also

• Good Eats
• Harold McGee
• Iron Chef America

External links

• Official website
• Alton Brown at IMDb
• FoodNetwork.com: Good Eats
• Good Eats Wiki
• Alton Brown Group on Flickr
• His James Beard Foundation Award, including a video of his acceptance speech
• Good Eats show fan site with transcripts
• Interview, Macworld
• Food for Thought, Guideposts, August 2006