The Reboot Of Alton Brown

Happily Remarried And Reveling In The Return Of His Food Network Show Good Eats, The Chef Has Hit An All-time High—on And Off The Screen

- Ana Calderone

Alton Brown swings a vintage saber and cleanly cuts the neck offa bottle of sparkling rosé out the back door of his Marietta, Ga., loft and pours himself a glass. “I’m just too lazy to do it the other way,” he says of his unconventional uncorking method, the subject of one of his most popular YouTube videos (with more than 3 million views). It’s the kind of impressively nerdy skill that fans of Brown and his show Good Eats have come to expect—and demand.

A fixture on the Food Network since 1999, Brown, 57, has turned his style of science meets cooking into a cottage industry. He has written eight bestselling cookbooks and hosted the channel’s tentpole shows like Iron Chef America. In August he brought back Good Eats: The Return—combining his trademark mix of history, cooking, campy costumes and pop-culture laced puns—for its first new season since 2012. “I always planned on doing the show again,” he says but knew he needed to find the time and the inspiration to start. “It’s not a true artistic endeavor unless I do it for me—and if somebody watches, great. This is now for me.”