Alton Brown
Alton Brown
Alton Crawford Brownis an American television personality, food show presenter, author, actor, and cinematographer. He is the creator and host of the Food Network television show Good Eats, host of the mini-series Feasting on Asphalt and Feasting on Waves, and host and main commentator on Iron Chef America, Cutthroat Kitchen and Camp Cutthroat. Brown is also the author of several books on food and cooking...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth30 July 1962
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
For me, it was kind of like going into the military or something. And anybody - any male - who has ever worked in a French kitchen knows what I am talking about when I say that.
The only unitasker allowed in my kitchen is a fire extinguisher.
Now my wife may think she's locked me out of the kitchen but MacGyver's not my patron saint for nothing.
Culinary tradition is not always based on fact. Sometimes it's based on history, on habits that come out of a time when kitchens were fueled by charcoal.
The kitchen's a laboratory, and everything that happens there has to do with science. It's biology, chemistry, physics. Yes, there's history. Yes, there's artistry. Yes, to all of that. But what happened there, what actually happens to the food is all science.
It ain't what you got, it's what you know and do with what you got, ... The difference between a cook and a chef is understanding what's going on.
Well, Food Network has complete control, since they own everything. But the way I like to put it is this: If you don't like Good Eats, it's my fault.
My feeling has always been that Good Eats would have never happened had it been left to a committee.
I started cooking in college to get girls, ... I was pathetic. Girls didn't want to go out with me. But I found that if I offered to cook for a girl, there was more of a chance that she'd say yes.
The stubby French painter Toulouse-Lautrec supposedly invented chocolate mousse - I find that rather hard to believe, but there you have it.
In the end the French chef that nearly killed me became one of my best friends, and she could never quite understand how that happened.
It's not perfect by any means, but I do think I wrote a pretty good argument for it being better than shoving your hand over the fire.
I think a lot of food shows, especially when we started 'Good Eats' back in the late '90s, they were still really about food. 'Good Eats' isn't about food, it's about entertainment. If, however, we can virally infect you with knowledge or interest, then all the better.
My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera