Alton Brown Slayed Broadway With ‘Eat Your Science’

Culinary world hero Alton Brown just checked off another item on the ol’ bucket list: He made it on Broadway. The Good Eats mastermind brought his Eat Your Science live tour to Manhattan’s Barrymore Theater for just one week, concluding with a final performance on Sunday night.

And while Broadway has seen a bit of culinary-related action recently — such as Fully Committed, the one-man show in which Jesse Tyler Ferguson comedically chronicles the scene at a hot NYC restaurant, and Waitress, featuring the aroma of fresh-baked pies — it’s safe to say this was the first time a Broadway performer has mixed up pumpkin spice cocktails, or popped popcorn in a vessel resembling a gigantic rocket ship.

Brown’s two-and-a-half-hour show also included liquid nitrogen snow cones, a timely song about brining turkeys, and plenty of audience participation: While texting during a Broadway show would typically be considered a major breach of theater etiquette, Brown encouraged it, asking the audience to tweet questions that he then tackled during the show.

Even the New York Times’ theatre critic Alexis Soloski couldn’t help but be charmed by Brown’s antics; while she critiqued Eat Your Science for its lack of “a governing structure or theme,” she also declared the show “a hoot,” saying, “He is a know-it-all who just might know it all, and if some of his material isn’t precisely gourmet, he has the smarts and the delivery to put it over.” (Soloski also perfectly summed up the show by calling it “a little like having Harold McGee’s cherished kitchen science tome On Food and Cooking read aloud by Gallagher.”)

Eat Your Science is now taking a lengthy hiatus, but will return in March for 40 more shows that will take Brown from Los Angeles to Orlando and everywhere in between; peep his official website for details and ticket info. And if you can’t make it to one of his live shows, stay tuned for his upcoming internet cooking show, which will basically be Good Eats 2.0.

• Review: Alton Brown, a Mad Culinary Scientist in a Broadway Laboratory [NY Times]
• Alton Brown’s New Internet Cooking Show Will Basically Be Good Eats 2.0 [E]

Watch: Alton Brown Prefers Wieners Over Fine Dining