Alton Brown’s new live show encourages audiences to play with their food

Alton Brown makes learning delicious. As the host of the long-running Food Network show “Good Eats,” Brown presented simple recipes with a scientific bent: What’s the best method of preparing a Thanksgiving turkey, for instance, or how do you increase the softness of your chocolate chip cookies?

Since his show ended in 2012, Brown has toured the country, including Spokane in 2015, with live shows highlighting outrageous culinary demonstrations. Brown returns to the INB Performing Arts Center on Wednesday with an all-new show, called “Eat Your Science.”

Brown talked to The Spokesman-Review in January before he hit the road, discussing some of the secrets behind his show, what it’s like to perform on Broadway and why he uses social media to promote local businesses. (The following interview has been condensed.)

The Spokesman-Review: When you’re on tour, what’s your typical schedule like?

Alton Brown: We travel at night, kind of like a rock ‘n’ roll band, and when we arrive in a city, it’s usually early in the morning. We have this social media program called #ABRoadEats, where my fans tell me where to go for coffee and breakfast. We tabulate those the night before, and I hit the streets while the crew unloads.

SR: Why do you think it’s important to support those local businesses?

Brown: If you have fans in a city and you happen to be a food person, why not take advantage of their knowledge? I also think that if I’m traveling to all these cities playing shows, it’d be a real waste to not continue to establish and build a relationship with my fans in that area. … I’m not going to do this forever. I want memories of these places. I want to be able to remember, “Oh, holy smokes, remember the waffles at the Scoop? And the coffee at Coeur was really good.” Every show is more or less the same, but every city is radically different. It’s more of a personal goal for me than any kind of marketing tool.

SR: I understand that the show you’re bringing to Spokane had a run on Broadway.

Brown: Actually, I first toured it in some cities in the spring of 2016. Typically, you don’t tour shows during presidential elections because advertising is hard to buy and people are distracted, so I decided not to tour in the fall. But when there was an opportunity to play Broadway for a week during Thanksgiving, I jumped on that.

SR: What was it like playing Broadway? Few people can say they’ve actually experienced that.

Brown: Well, I think a lot of people can say they’ve opened shows on Broadway, but usually they close rather quickly. (laughs) And mine was a limited engagement. We only did eight performances. But it was a personal milestone. I got a theater degree in college, and although I haven’t been sitting around dreaming about Broadway, the significance of the event was certainly not lost on me. I do believe that audiences are audiences no matter where you go, but the theaters and the audiences on Broadway are different. That’s the NFL. That’s the top of the theater pyramid in the United States. It was harder work, but it was extremely rewarding.

SR: How is “Eat Your Science” different from the show you brought to Spokane in 2015?

Brown: All the material is completely new. The format of being a culinary variety show is still there. I’m still playing music with the band, but the songs are all new. There are still ridiculously large and bizarre food demonstrations, but they’re all new. … If you liked that (last) show, you’ll like this one. It’s built on the same bones, but all the meat is new.

SR: What’s your process when it comes to devising a large-scale show like this?

Brown: I sit down with my longtime production designer, Todd Bailey, who worked with me on all my “Good Eats” shows. We talk about what works, what doesn’t work. But the main thing is trying to find large, interesting demonstrations that are theatrical but also achievable in a theater setting. Because here’s the thing: You can’t use fire, which is one of the absolute primary elements of cooking. … I can’t have anything that’s so big you can’t fit in the door. I’ve got to be able to get things down ramps and into tracks. There are all these restrictions placed on me by the reality of touring.

But you literally do sit down and stare at the window and scratch your head, I swear. Putting together this last show, I came up with three demos that just didn’t work. We built a device that used two CO2 lasers to pop popcorn. They were controlled by robotic arms, and you could watch laser beams pop popcorn. We were building the show at a theater in Charleston, and I got the thing on the stage and it sucked. I mean, it works, but in a theatrical environment, it’s boring. You’ve got to be able to edit yourself. It’s a real challenge.

SR: Can you describe some of the highlights of this show without giving too much away?

Brown: Well… no. (laughs) I won’t, other than to say it’s a variety show. There’s live music. There are puppets. There’s audience interaction. There’s comedy, hopefully. And there are two very, very large, very unusual and potentially dangerous food demonstrations. All I’ll tell you is one involves extreme heat and the other involves extreme cold. And by the way, if you sit in the first few rows, don’t wear something that has to be dry-cleaned.

SR: So it’s like a Gallagher show, then?

Brown: No, because Gallagher made a mess just to make a mess. I make a mess accidentally as a byproduct of scientific exploration.