Southern Food & Wine Fest part III – Alton!

For the food festival, I bought the very pricey 3 day VIP package, mostly because I wanted to get the full experience. To say I was disappointed is putting it mildly. When I went to pick up my package I was presented with nothing more than a stack of tickets. No goodie bag, badge or even marketing slicks were offered. As a marketing person, I have attended and arranged hundreds of conferences so this was a shocker to me. Not even a measly logo totebag or Guy Fieri bobble-head? So lame. And not even badges for exhibits or events, I had to use tickets each day and get my hand stamped. Maybe I should offer my services because they sure could use them.




The highlight of the event for me was the Alton Brown cooking demo. When Alton came out on stage, I have to say I gasped. Here was a man a mere shadow of his former self. Brown went on to explain – with props of course – that he had lost 45 pounds in 5 months eating a low carb, high protein, high fat diet. That fat being Omega-3s obtained mostly through eating oily fish. At this point of course, he had to hold up the little buggers, inches from the camera and added a little ventriloquism just for fun.



Alton got the white board into play explaining why smaller oiler fish is better for you than large ones, both because of heavy metals and sustainability. Also some mumbo jumbo chemical discussion about Omega 3 fatty acids, some guy's prostate and brain cells. Mostly flew over my head since I don’t have a prostate and have very few brain cells.



Then the real fun began with Alton stirring up brines and pickles. Never, never answer a question that is lobbed to the audience by Alton. His searing dry wit will wither any answer that you think you know. For a change, I sat quietly and held my tongue.

After the brine and pickling he brought out the big guns – yes the munitions box smoker! In it he made smoked trout. The most bizarre thing he made was a dish called rollmops, of which I’d never heard. It’s apparently German and my regular readers know what a fan I am of German food…um, not exactly! So these were fillets of herring or anchovy that were wrapped around cornichons or cocktail onions, secured with a toothpick and then pickled for a couple of weeks in a jar. He didn’t get many volunteers to sample that one, to be sure.




At the end, Alton started taking questions from the audience – and he took a lot of them running over the allotted time by a good 30-40 minutes. Kudos for that, the audience loved it. One of my favorite Q&A exchanges went like this:

Woman: But Alton, what do I do to get my kids to eat fish?
Alton: You say; ”here, sit down and eat this”



Gotta love Alton. Since I was sitting at the front most table near the doors, as soon as Alton left the stage, I practically fled the room and dashed over to the reception venue, not wanting a repeat of the Deens debacle of the night before. It worked as I ended up 3rd in line. I had the chance to meet Alton, he signed my copy of Feasting on Asphalt and even expressed interest in this blog when I told him about it. So Alton, if you’re reading this, thanks for the fun but remember – GeoFooding is trademarked.