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The first episode of Good Eats exploded onto the Food Network's airwaves in 1999, and nothing has really been the same since. Created by and starring a hyper-verbal, dizzyingly smart guy named Alton Brown, the show knocked food television off its predictable axis of stand-and-stir cooking shows, introducing a new visual language of spectacle, snazz, and smarts to the medium. Seventeen years later, Brown is still a major star: he's the host (and evil mastermind) of the machiavellian cooking game show Cutthroat Kitchen, the author of ten (or is it seven? Or nine? Either way, there's a new one coming out soon) books on food and cooking, and the star of a stage production that plays its blend of food, humor, and music to sold-out crowds across the country — a literal traveling roadshow. Through it all, Alton Brown remains one of the most outspoken, clear-eyed, straight-shooting people in the weird world of culinary celebrity — so, who better to bring in to the Eater Upsell studio with hosts Greg Morabito and Helen Rosner, to provide the endcap to Season One? That's right: this is the end of the first season of Eater's interview podcast. Don't freak out, friends! We'll be back in the spring with a brand-new lineup of incredible guests, interviews by turns searing and hilarious, and all the insidery, gossipy, eye-opening food-world news and stories you could hope for. If you miss us in the meantime, spend some time with the episode archive. Season Two will be here before you know it. As always, you can get the Eater Upsell on iTunes, listen on Soundcloud, or subscribe via RSS or search your favorite podcast app. You can also get the entire archive of episodes — plus transcripts, behind-the-scenes photos, and more — right here on Eater. Here's the transcript of our conversation in The Eater Upsell Episode 17: Alton Brown, edited to just the main interview. For Greg and Helen's shameful admission that neither has been to Waffle House, you'll have to listen to the audio above. Helen: So we're here in the Eater Upsell studio with the one and only Alton Brown. Helen: Heelen's not so great. I had a science teacher in junior high who called me Hecken because he said, "You're not allowed to say hell." Alton: No. I don't know where they get that. I count seven that come to mind right away. I'm working on my eighth. My eighth will be out next year. I'm on it right now, but I'm pretty sure there's only seven. "Every disaster has a way of becoming something special, as long as you don't freak out. There are assets in every liability." Alton: I think that people count sometimes things that I don't count. Like, I did a — one of them was like a cook's notebook, but it wasn't a book. One of them was like an empty journal. I'm not going to count that as a book, so, no, seven. I'm pretty sure there are seven books, because I'm working on number eight. Helen: Arguably, ten book-shaped objects that a person could buy. Alton: No, because I think that some of them aren't even in print anymore. Seven, I'm sticking with seven. Helen: Also, extremely longtime Food Network host, star, director, mastermind. Greg: Seventeen years in Food Network years must be like 87 years. Alton: I don't know if it's fewer or more. It's hard to say. I think it depends on your pay grade. The only person that's still there — when I went there in '99, Bobby Flay was already there. Bobby Flay is still there. But other than that, we've outlasted everybody. Greg: If you see Bobby at an event, you guys just nod, like, "We're the —" Alton: Well, we have rings, we have matching rings for that many years. Alton: No, it wouldn't be anything that dorky. We'd get better tables at Nobu or something, I don't know. Greg: Seventeen years, that really is — I kind of know the history of the Food Network a little bit, but in my mind, it also seems like Food Network's been around forever. Is that how you feel like? Alton: Well, I remember when there was no Food Network, so no. It feels like it's been a while. I think that's true of anything that works its way into the cultural — I wouldn't say zeitgeist because that's longer than that, but it's part of the cultural fabric. It seems that way because it's like, you have a cell phone and FedEx, you can't imagine when you didn't have them. They just always seem to have been there. Helen: But you also, along with the inaugural class of Food Network people, were among — maybe you were the first to really popularize thinking of food and cooking as fun, scientifically-minded experimentation. Alton: Well, I think Good Eats was the first show to take a non-chef food stance, and look at it as storytelling from a cinemagraphic standpoint, or television standpoint. Then also to focus more on actual scientific know-how than what we'll call chefly tradition, if you will. Alton: I did, I was a cinematographer and a commercial director for almost ten years before I quit and went to culinary school. Helen: So much of that, I think, if you go back and watch old episodes of Good Eats, which are — Alton: We prefer to call those vintage — or classic, heirloom varieties. Helen: Heirloom Good Eats, which are available on Netflix, and are so much fun to go back to. "If I've got an intentional choice with any form of media, especially where food is concerned, I'm going to attempt to reinvent it, or break a rule." Greg: I've got to say, watching it again, I really think that that show has informed a lot of internet cooking, the new narrative for a lot of food TV, in that you pull in other elements of things, you tell a story, you maybe have some fun with the filmmaking of it instead of just, like, you know, demonstration.
