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- Alton Brown is known for his “Good Eats” TV show.
Alton Brown, well-known for his “Good Eats” show on the Food Network and roles with the network’s “Iron Chef America,” “Food Network Star,” and “Cutthroat Kitchen,” is back with another live culinary variety show.
On April 18, the Alton Brown Live: Last Bite tour takes the stage at Detroit’s Fox Theatre.
Last Bite is billed as the culinarian’s final tour. He has often wowed live and TV audiences with his scientific approach to food and cooking and his explanations for why things work as they do.
Brown’s previous culinary variety tours, the Edible Inevitable Tour (2013), Eat Your Science (2016), and Beyond the Eats (2022), all made stops in Detroit.
But at the current show, audiences can expect something big, he says.
How big? Try 27 feet.
“We’ve built something very big this time,” he says. “There’s a lot of audience interaction. There’s even kind of a competition built into this.”
The food guru bills his live performances as a mix of “storytelling, comedy, and strange culinary demonstrations.”
Brown, who has a longtime interest in how science connects to food and cooking, says that he turned up the science dial by about 30% for the current show.
“There was quite a bit more science in this show than we’ve done before,” he says. “I think that’s because I kind of made this one for me. I think I made the other three tours for the fans, and this one, because it’s the last one that I’m going to be doing like this, I really wanted to do what I wanted to do.”
Last week, the Free Press caught up with Brown via phone to talk about the new show, audiences, and foods of Detroit. His answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION: What do you like about coming to Detroit?
ANSWER: The high point for me on this tour, no BS, is the Fox and Detroit, you know. It’s one of my favorite houses to play, some of my favorite audiences to play for. It’s a city that has a very specific kind of pride marker for their own cuisine and a vital kind of self-awareness of their civic identity.
Q. What is it that you like about the Detroit audience?
A. Detroit is a city that has this sense of pride in coming back from the brink there for a while. And that changes the dynamic as well a lot, and I think that’s one of the reasons that the fans there in the crowds that we have in the Fox are so into it and so alive.
Q: How so?
A: They have a really good sense of humor. We kind of have this record we keep of cities and how much they like to laugh. New York City being the least laughing town in the United States. And I would say that Detroit’s right up there with Dallas and a couple of others in being just very eager to laugh and be entertained. … We just love it there.
Q. Why do you think that is?
A. I think that comes from resilience. And it comes from a lot of things. But it’s very genuine. The authenticity is palpable.
Q. Why do a live show?
A: One of the reasons that I’ve focused so much of my energies over the last 10 years on the live performing is because, quite frankly, I don’t think we need more stuff to watch on our screens or tucked away in our homes. We need to be out in big rooms with a lot of other people. I think from a cultural standpoint, it’s really important.
Q. Is there a favorite thing about touring?
A. The audiences. A TV camera actively sucks your soul directly out of your eyeballs. Right? I mean, that’s what the camera does. Audiences give back typically more than they take. And so being able to interact with audiences every night and kind of lay yourself bare in front of an audience every night is a wonderful, wonderful exchange. Wonderful organic, very human exchange. And the fact that I’m obsessed with kind of trying to get it right. When you do television, all you really have to do is get it right once, really.
Q. The last time you were in Detroit, did you eat at restaurants around here? Did you have coney? A shawarma or Detroit-style pizza?
A. I’ve done all of the above. I didn’t have all the above last time, but I have made it a point since first going on tour back in 2013 to hit as many of the spots as possible. And I have friends who are from Detroit and keep homes in Detroit and go back all the time. Every time I go, they give me a new list, but my problem is that I’m really terrible with names of restaurants.
Q. How did you like them?
A. I’m a fan of all three. I think that Detroit pizza doesn’t get enough credit. People don’t talk about it enough. People outside of Detroit don’t talk about Detroit-style pizza nearly enough. … New York-style and Chicago-style get all the all the credit, in my opinion.
Alton Brown Live: Last Bite
7:30 p.m. April 18
Fox Theatre
2211 Woodward, Detroit
313presents.com
$35 and up
