If you’re in the Centennial Hall audience on Wednesday, April 9, please do not suggest that Alton Brown try Tucson’s ubiquitous Sonoran hot dog.
Seriously; in his two previous Tucson shows with Broadway In Tucson, the renowned Food Network personality has been introduced and reintroduced to what some suggest should be our official Fourth of July hot dog.
Frankly, he’s Sonoran hot dogged out.
“All anybody ever wants you to eat is those damn Sonoran hot dogs, which I have to tell you, I just don’t freaking care about bacon wrapped around a hot dog,” he ranted during a phone call last week. “I just don’t. I’ve tried. I’ve tried, really, I’ve tried. I’ve eaten every damn Sonoran dog that’s been put in front of me. And people are like, their eyes are rolling back in their head and they’re frothing at the mouth, and I’m like, I’m sorry, I don’t get it. ... Can I just have the hot dog or the bacon? ... I’m being completely open and honest with you, I don’t get it, and as far as I know, there is no other food available in the area, because no one will give me anything but Sonoran hot dogs.”
Sonoran hot dogs won’t be on his mind when Brown takes the stage for his “Last Bite” farewell tour. He’s not quitting his live shows, mind you, just the touring. But for this final road trip, Brown is pulling out all the stops in what he describes as his “culinary variety show.”
Food Network personality Alton Brown comes on stage in his PJs in “Last Bite,” coming to Centennial Hall on Wednesday, April 9.
“The culinary variety show is my invention,” said the 62-year-old Atlanta native, who jokes that his “entire DNA pool is from the north Georgia mountains. I mean, we’re trailer trash. Our family crest has a propane tank in it.”
His show is part stand-up, part sketch comedy with music thrown in and plenty of audience interaction. He also cooks on stage, using contraptions and devices he’s invented.
“To me, innovation and coming up with ways of doing things that other people haven’t done is kind of like my whole reason for doing things,” he explained.
If you ever saw his “Good Eats” show that ran from 1999-2012 on the Food Network, you know that Brown likes to deep-dive into the science behind food.
“If you want to understand what’s going on in food, the answer is almost universally science,” he explained. “I am not a naturally good cook. I’m not one of those people that just can waltz into the kitchen and throw dinner together unless I understand what the food is and what it needs me to do to it. And the answer to that, universally, is science.”
But science is also the springboard for storytelling, which is central to what Brown, a former cinematographer and video director, truly is: a storyteller.
“’Good Eats’ was a show about telling stories about food, right? And I find those processes to be fascinating,” he said, confessing that he was never good at science in school. “I made a D in chemistry in high school.”
The average “Good Eats” research book was 300 pages. “Last Bite” took him eight months to build, including hundreds of hours of scientific research, “because we deal with some pretty high concepts,” he said.
“I want the aha moment,” said Brown, whose new book, “Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations,” was released in February. “I want people to have the empowerment of the aha moment, and then, if they’re curious enough, they’ll go get the rest of it themselves.”
The premise of “Last Bite” was inspired by Brown’s recent habit of waking up at 3 a.m. and going down to his kitchen in his pajamas and robe to “ponder things.”
“I’ve started carrying around this thing called the ‘Carousel of Concerns,’ which is this big circular file folder thing,” he explained. “I decided to make that the whole first act of the show about me down in my kitchen in the middle of the night pondering food things mostly.”
In the show’s second half, Brown will bring out his latest invention for a cooking demonstration.
“We always build something interesting. This thing’s 27 feet long ... and I’m not going to tell you what it does,” he said, calling the show the biggest he’s ever done.
The secret contraption stands 10 feet tall at its highest, and Brown refused to say how it operates or what he will cook with it.
“Are we talking fruit, meat, vegetable, a starch, anything like that?” we pressed him.
“You’ve gotten two correct,” he added.
We’re stumped, but we’re pretty sure he won’t be breaking down the science of the Sonoran dog.
Wednesday’s show starts at 7:30 p.m. at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd., on the University of Arizona campus. Tickets, $40-$120, are available through broadwayintucson.com.
