Alton Brown's Edible Inevitable Tour, Feb 8 2014

We braved the snow for a show we ordered tickets for last June, and had a blast at the gorgeously restored Oriental Theater.

Alton's show is one part Blue Man, two parts Good Eats, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. He said the purpose of the show is for his own amusement, not ours, and to do what they won't let him do on television: more fart jokes from his yeast puppets, ranting, and singing.

The show featured five songs (his sax work is a little better than his guitar and singing, the band includes the prop master and composer/musician from Good Eats), including a punk-rock Christmas wish list with one item (Easy Bake), and a couple of bluesy sad stories (Pork Chop Blues, and Airport Shrimp Cocktail), stories of home and TV production, and two Cooking Demonstrations of Unusual Size: Jet Cream, where a fire extinguisher stops being a unitasker, and, and the Mega-Bake, a scaled-up Easy Bake with 54,000 watts of lights to cook pizza on stage.

A big part of the show was his ever-changing "Ten Things I'm Pretty Sure I'm Sure About Food" which ranged from merely putting up the slide ("Raisins are always optional") to ten-minute stories ("Chicken do not have fingers"). I wish I could remember all ten, but they included "Trout does not belong in ice cream" and "The most important piece of equipment in the kitchen is..." (the answer is the kitchen table, because sharing food is what transforms food).

Prior to the show, we dined at Atwood Cafe, where we saw himself having a drink at the end of the bar.

If the show comes around again, go see it. He's a terrific entertainer.

We also enjoyed the show tremendously. I think everyone in the audience fantasized what it would be like if only you could get people to pay for tickets to watch you onstage performing whatever schtick you wanted to. Even better, making a killing selling your stuff, aprons and t-shirts. At intermission I thought what a line for the bar, it was well over a hundred people. Ends up that was the apparel stand, the bar line was fairly short, thank goodness! It was educational at times, comedy, goofiness, music and just plain fun. Even the kids in our row seemed to be really having a good time.

I took my son to this show - he's 8, and he loved it! The yeast puppets, especially. He never saw Good Eats when it was on TV, sadly, but he loves Food Network and wants to be a chef when he's older. The show is really fun for all ages, I think - Alton Brown knows how to please the crowds, that's for sure. I think it was a great way to expose my son to the excitement of life in the kitchen.

nukegirl wrote:I took my son to this show - he's 8, and he loved it! The yeast puppets, especially. He never saw Good Eats when it was on TV, sadly, but he loves Food Network and wants to be a chef when he's older. The show is really fun for all ages, I think - Alton Brown knows how to please the crowds, that's for sure. I think it was a great way to expose my son to the excitement of life in the kitchen.

If you get the Cooking Channel, he can watch old episodes of "Good Eats" there.