Alton Brown Biography

Alton Crawford Brown (born July 30, 1962) is an American television personality, celebrity chef, author, actor, and cinematographer. He is the creator and host of the Food Network television show Good Eats, the mini-series Feasting on Asphalt and Feasting on Waves, and host and main commentator on Iron Chef America. Brown is also the author of several books on cookery.

He brings a knowledge and enthusiasm for the science of cooking and food and a humorous approach to his shows. Bon Apptit 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.

In October 2013, Alton launched "Alton Brown Live: The Edible Inevitable Tour," his first national tour visiting 45 cities through March 2014. The show includes stand-up comedy, talk show antics, a multimedia lecture, live music and "extreme" food experimentation

Early life

Brown was born in Los Angeles, California and spent his youth in the Boy Scouts. Brown's father, Alton Brown Sr., was a media executive in Cleveland, Georgia, owner of radio station WRWH and publisher of the newspaper White County News. An activist who published lurid photos of the area's environmental problems, Brown's father was found dead in his home in 1974. The younger Brown received a degree in drama from the University of Georgia and 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..

Alton Brown"?s flair in the kitchen developed early with guidance from his mother and grandmother, who nurtured his budding culinary talent, and which he skillfully used later "as a way to get dates"? in college. Switching gears as an adult, Alton spent a decade working as a cinematographer and video director, but realized that he spent all his time between shoots watching cooking shows, which he found to be dull and uninformative. Convinced that he could do better, Alton left the film business and moved to Vermont to train at the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vt.

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. He is outspoken in his shows about his dislike of single-purpose kitchen utensils and equipment ("unitaskers"), such as garlic presses and margarita machines, although he adapts a few traditionally single-purpose devices, such as rice cookers and melon ballers, into multi-purpose tools.

TV series

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. In May 2011, Alton Brown announced an end to Good Eats after 14 seasons. The final episode, "Turn on the Dark", aired February 10, 2012.

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

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. Brown also served as the host for all four seasons of the spin-off The Next Iron Chef.

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. Brown also expressed trying a Feasting on Rails, as he is a train enthusiast.

Cutthroat Kitchen

In 2013, Brown hosted Cutthroat Kitchen, a new competition series pitting four chefs against each other in a 'no-holds-barred' cook-off. Each chef is given $25,000 with which to bid on certain conditions that will be upheld during the competition (such as exclusive use of an ingredient or preventing a competitor from using certain cooking tools). The winner keeps whatever is left of their funds as their prize. The series premiered on August 11, 2013.

Other appearances

Brown served as a mentor on Season 8 of The Next Food Network Star alongside Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis. During season 8, each mentor selected and mentored a team of five finalists. Team Alton's finalist Justin Warner was the season 8 winner; however, Brown will not be producing Warner's show.

He returned, along with Flay and De Laurentiis, as a mentor and judge for season 9. Due to a format change, season 9 did not feature teams.

In 2010, 2011 and 2012, Brown hosted Thanksgiving Live! for The Food Network, a show featuring other Food Network personalities preparing various Thanksgiving dishes and answering viewers' questions.

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".

Brown appeared on the November 18, 2012 episode of MythBusters, assisting in the testing of two myths involving pressure-cooked popcorn and using a car's hot engine compartment to cook a holiday meal. A third segment testing a dishwasher to cook lasagna was posted on the show's website.

Brown appeared on the Travel Channel show The Layover with Anthony Bourdain which focused on the city of Atlanta in 2013. In the episode Bourdain takes Brown to the Clermont Lounge.

Brown guest starred as the "Guest Bailiff" and "Expert Witness" in John Hodgman's comedy/court show podcast Judge John Hodgman.

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, Shun knives, and for Heifer International.

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

Twitter

In 2012, Brown gained popularity by pioneering the use of humorous "Analog Tweets," wherein he posts pictures of hand-drawn Twitter responses on Post-it notes which he has stuck to his computer monitor.

The Alton Browncast

On June 28, 2013, Alton Brown joined the Nerdist Podcast Network with his podcast The Alton Browncast. In this podcast, Brown reviews recent food news, takes calls and questions from listeners, and interviews celebrities and other guests. Food is often a focal point of the podcast, but several episodes have branched off into other areas of Brown's interest, including men's syle, production and recording of music, and various aspects of acting and cinematography. So far, it has featured chats with food luminaries such as Justin Warner, Hugh Acheson, Alex Guarnaschelli, Bobby Flay, and Keith Schroder. Guests have also included men's style maven Sid Mashburn and clothing manufacturing team Adam Schoenberg and Cory Rosenberg; producer Jim Milan and soundman Patrick Beldin from "The Edible Inevitable Tour" and actor Bart Hansard, who played multiple characters on Good Eats.

Personal life

Brown lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife, his daughter Zoey (born in 1999), two Cardigan corgis, and used to have a green iguana named Spike. 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. He gave up motorcycling by 2012, citing slowing reflexes and safety. Brown is a pilot, and was featured in the aviation magazine AOPA Flight Training. He completed his first solo flight on June 25, 2007, and earned his private pilot certificate on June 5, 2008. He owns two planes, a Cessna 206 and a Cessna 414.

Brown changed his eating habits in 2009 in order to lose weight and become healthier, losing 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 (except for club soda, which is okay), 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 every day. 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)

Brown was also a contributor to the 2005 cookbook Food Network Favorites: Recipes from Our All-Star Chefs (ISBN 0696230216). He selected the nonprofit world hunger organization Heifer International to receive a portion of the royalties.

See also

• Harold McGee