When Alton Brown takes the stage Sunday in Virginia Beach, patrons seated in the best seats will get a bonus of sorts: a poncho.
"One of our demos has a history of, ah, ejecting particulate matter, shall we say?" Brown explained. "It doesn't always make a big mess, but a couple of times it has. So we find taking pre-emptive measures against that to be a good thing."
The television celebrity chef is performing this fall on his nationwide "Alton Brown Live! The Edible Inevitable Tour." It stops Sunday at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts.
In a telephone interview, Brown revealed his favorite place in the country to eat oysters, what he gobbles down when he's all alone and why television chefs can't do what grandma can.
Q. You have the demeanor of a beloved chemistry teacher - funny, tough, with high expectations. The margins of your cookbooks resemble chalkboards. So, what's America's grade in cooking school?
A. I'd give America a C+, because we're having to average for the whole class, and there's some stragglers. By and large, we are most improved.
Q. What skill or technique would you encourage a home cook to master?
A. The proper saute. To actually saute food properly, meaning to cook it almost constantly moving in a hot vessel with a small amount of fat.
It is, on a day-to-day basis, the most valuable of all skills. It's very, very versatile. The reason that Americans have a really hard time with it is that it requires heat management, and we kind of suck at that.
Even with really, really great thermo-meters - digital thermometers, infrared thermometers that are laser-guided - it's hard to say when the pan is hot enough.
We tend to be afraid of getting things hot enough in this country. We're just not comfortable with it. One of the reasons for that is that it's difficult to translate to television and it's difficult to write in a book.
It needs to be one person teaching another. "Hold your hand here. Do you feel that? Do you hear that? Do you smell that? OK. That's right. This isn't."
It's one-on-one, hands-on cooking instruction, which we don't get much of in this country anymore.
Q. So we're just not passing down our cooking skills anymore?
A. No, we're not. We're getting them from me. And other people like me. And that's good, and it's bad.
I think people are more food aware now than ever. We're very sophisticated as eaters, but there is something about having a mother teach a daughter, or a father a son; there's something about the generational transmission of cooking know-how that is extremely valuable. And we don't get that much anymore.
I worry about that.
Q. You've taught a lot of people a lot about cooking. Do you have a favorite recipe?
A. The No. 1-rated recipe on the entire FoodNetwork.com is my macaroni-and-cheese, and it still boggles my mind. But I wouldn't look at that and say, "That's my be-all, end-all recipe."
If I'm going to be proud of a recipe, I'm going to be proud of it because it made other people better cooks. I'm proud of my roast turkey recipe, because at FoodNetwork.com, over 4,600 people who have written reviews for it have had better turkey.
Q. Here's one from a bachelor friend who confesses to eating peanut butter on crackers for dinner on occasion: What's your go-to, weeknight, quick dinner?
A. If it was just me? I would stand in front of the refrigerator and eat hummus. I'm a hummus fanatic - an addict, potentially. And I will actually take a tortilla and toast it on the open flame of my cooktop and dip it in hummus and call it dinner. And I would do that every night.
Q. In the introduction to "Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen," you wrote: "I think that cooking is a lot of fun and I hate to see people not have fun doing it just because they don't have the right tools." But withholding tools is at the heart of your newest show, "Cutthroat Kitchen." Do you have a latent mean streak?
A. There was a real chance for it to be mean, but I don't think it is. The more I see it, the more I think we're mischievous; we're definitely devilish, but we're not mean.
("Cutthroat Kitchen" gives) people the opportunity to be put into positions where they've really got to think their way out of it. It's watching them use their brains and skills to creatively get around problems. Of course, it's also the great tension of "Am I willing to spend $5,000 to be the guy who does not have to make all of his cookware out of aluminum foil?'"
When you see people start realizing, "Wait, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to spend that money. Let them spend that money. I can do that and still win this." That's a beautiful thing to watch. It's not this mean show about throwing people under the culinary bus.
Q. Is there a "Cutthroat Kitchen" contestant who really impressed you? I like the guy who had only a set of plastic cutlery to cook with and devised a knife out of the jagged edge of a can lid.
A. I do have some favorites, but I can't talk about them because they're in a season that hasn't even come out yet.
When we shot Season 1, no one had seen it. So the contestants didn't know what to expect. In Season 2, that's where we really come into our own. We're getting people who had seen the show so they're already in the mindset of how to play the game, so it's better.
Q. So what should the audience at your Virginia Beach road show expect?
A. The unexpected, of course! They will see a true variety show. If you are a "Good Eats" fan, you will be delighted, because there are certain elements that you will recognize that are done in a very, very different way. Specifically, puppets.
There are two very large, very strange food demonstrations that I promise nobody has ever seen before unless they've seen the show. One involves extreme cold and one involves extreme heat.
There is what I would like to think of as comedy. And my trio and I will be doing some food songs. My trio. Yes. I've got a trio.
Q. We've got lots of great food here in Tidewater to work with - oysters, okra, country ham, blow toads. Will you be using any local ingredients?
A. It depends on what we can get that day in the markets. We can only change the show so much, but there is one dish in particular that I'm going to be making that we will be bringing in local food.
Q. Is there a quintessential Tidewater dish that you have a hankering to eat while you are here?
A. It's actually a little difficult for me, because I adore oysters. And I adore oysters from that area. I think you've got the best oysters in the United States.
I love them.
When I turned 30, I developed an oyster intolerance. I can no longer eat them. Which is just cruel. I look at them. I can smell them and my mouth waters.
I can't eat them, unless I want to spend the night in the hospital. But that's what I always crave when I'm in those parts.
Q. Finally, do you ever get sick of food?
A. Yeah, I get sick of it, and I sometimes get sick of cooking. I actually like cooking more than I like food, in some ways.
When I get sick of cooking, I cook eggs. Eggs always make me like cooking again because they are so miraculously, fabulously wonderful.
I don't have the appetite of a foodie.
I don't go out much. I cook at home.
I know restaurants in cities where I spend a lot of time, like New York, but even there I eat very simply.
Yeah, I can taste the difference between Spanish saffron and Iranian saffron, but on a day-to-day basis, I'm not going to sit down at some four-star meal.
These restaurants that are famous for doing like 17-course, five-hour seatings? That sounds like purgatory to me. I don't want to sit anywhere that long.
I get to a point, I'm so tired of chefs being so clever. You know what? Cook me a steak, make me a martini, leave me alone.
It's food. OK? It's food. It's interesting, and it's wonderful, but the real miracle of food is connecting people, not marveling at these spectacular creations.
I love a great meal, but I'm more interested in the people that are sitting around the table with me than the food that is actually on it.
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If you go
What "Alton Brown Live! The Edible Inevitable Tour"
When 7:30 p.m. Sunday
Where Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, 201 Market St., Virginia Beach
Cost $35 - $125
More info www.sandlercenter.org