Q&A: 10 questions with Food Network’s Alton Brown

You may know him as the unitasker-hating mad kitchen scientist on Good Eats, the Chairman's right-hand man on Iron Chef America, or maybe Cutthroat Kitchen's diabolical host. But however you recognize Food Network's Alton Brown, one thing's for sure: He'll be at the Merriam Theater giving Philly a taste of his geeky food stylings Nov. 8 at 8 pm with his "Alton Brown Live! The Edible Inevitable Tour."

Some 10 years in the making, Brown's ongoing traveling performance blends cooking show, variety show, musical, and stand-up act all into a single, two-hour food extravaganza, the likes of which have never before been seen. Brown is currently on the third leg of this tour, but it will be the show's first time in Philly.

I recently had a chance to talk with Brown over the phone, and though the conversation ranged in topic from the perpetual cheesesteak debate to a possible return of Good Eats in Web form, the takeaway is this: The "Edible Inevitable" is a can't-miss for Philly's food-obsessed masses. 

Philly.com: What can fans expect from the Philly stop on the "Edible Inevitable" tour? You seem to usually describe it as "stuff I can't do on TV."

Alton Brown: I perform some of my food songs. I do kind of a mini stand-up routine about food, about things I believe. I get to speak my mind openly, which is not something I can always do on TV. I sing, I play music, which I don't get to do on TV. And I do two very, very large, very, very unusual, potentially dangerous culinary demonstrations that are very impractical for the home cook and therefore something that I would not be allowed to do on TV.

P: What made you incorporate musical numbers into the show? Your previous projects didn't seem to music-oriented.

AB: Because no one will let me do that on TV! Good Eats is actually a very musical show — we had original scores for every single episode, and not many shows do that. But that's something I've done most of my life, and thought that if I was going to have a variety show — which is the way I really like to think of this stage show — it has to have music.

P: This is your third leg of the "Edible Inevitable" tour, but your first time bringing it to Philly. Do you tend to play some cities twice?

AB: I never come back to a city unless I were to completely retool the tour, so this is my first time with it in Philly. We played Pittsburgh, but not Philly.

P: So we shouldn't expect some form of Good Eats: Live to hit the Kimmel in November?

AB: If you're a Good Eats fan, you're going to enjoy the show — but it's not designed to be Good Eats onstage by any stretch of the imagination. It is a culinary variety show, all about performing for an audience. Whereas something like Good Eats was very much presentational and very scripted and structured, this show is looser, and it takes into account anything that might happen in a theater on any given night.

P: And what about the rumored return of Good Eats as a Web-based series? Any truth to that?

AB: All I'm going to say is yes, that is something. I get so many questions about this! If you're a Good Eats fan, just stand by. Something's coming for you.

P: This time around, the show includes a Twitter-based Q&A session. What made you go with that style over a traditional session?

AB: The Twitter Q&A is brand new and it's something that we've had a lot of success with so far. I've done a lot of regular Q&A sessions, but they tend to not move very well and you can't sort out the questions. We wanted to make sure people sending in questions were actually in the theater, and the Twitter people were like 'Why don't you just have them include a selfie in the theater?' Genius, of course!

P: Are you familiar with Philly's food scene at all? How do you decide what you're going to eat on tour?

AB: Oh, I'm pretty familiar. I spent some time there. But the interesting thing is that we're doing a Twitter program for fans called "#ABRoadEats," and we're only going to be eating at the top places suggested by my fans. So no matter what I know or who I know, we're eating what they tell me to eat.

P: So you're not going to be sticking to just the usual Garces or Starr-type restaurants we see a lot of out-of-towners frequent?

AB: As it's looking right now, from what the fans are sending us — and we are getting thousands and thousands of people telling us where to go — it will not be any of those. We will be eating at the "best kept secret" kinds of places, if you know what I mean. Regular folks, regular folk food.

P: Since you're familiar with Philly food, do you have a side in the perpetual cheesesteak debate?

AB: Right now I'm not going to air any opinion on the cheesesteak thing because we've got about five places that we're going to be hitting that the fans have suggested. So I'm wiping away anything that I may have thought about cheesesteak before, and I'm going to be basing my findings only on what we get for #ABRoadEats.

P: Well, you're probably going to upset at least one person no matter what choice you make. It is a passionate topic around here.

AB: You're very lucky that there's something that people are this passionate about, and have opinions about, and talk about. That's the cool part. Where I live, there isn't anything like that. I'm looking forward to that sense of passion.

You can catch Brown at the Merriam Theater on Nov. 8 at 8 p.m. – tickets available here.