Foodie News

What it was like to be a contestant on Alton Brown's show in Dallas

Alton Brown at the Music Hall in Dallas on December 10.

Geoff Keah

NOTE: Geoff Keah, a food-savvy Dallas resident, attended the Alton Brown show in Dallas on December 10 and shares his first-person account of participating as a contestant on stage.

I thought I knew my steaks — but I got tripped up by the T-bone.

That was my downfall when I joined culinary whiz Alton Brown on stage as a contestant in his Alton Brown Live: Beyond The Eats - The Holiday Variant! show at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Since 2013, Brown has periodically mounted this culinary variety show tour featuring food trivia, cooking lessons, and a game show with volunteers.

I've always been an AB fan - I love his quirky way of introducing the science behind why things work the way they do when cooking/baking. His style isn’t for everyone, which makes it even more appreciable.

I brought my dad along for the ride, which included tickets to a pre-show VIP Q&A featuring Alton and his wife, Elizabeth: It consisted of a 30-minute session where attendees asked whatever they wanted about his shows such as Good Eats and The Next Iron Chef, as well as a multitude of questions about food.

The official show opened promptly at 7:30 pm, when Brown and his band played a comedic, holiday-themed ditty, followed by a bit called "Rolodex of Regrets" -- humorous outtakes from various times in his life. One example involved his Aunt Verna and a case of mistaken chocolate that turned out to be Ex-Lax.

alton brown The T-bone was especially tricky.Geoff Keah

Fun and games
Next came the game show segment, requiring volunteers from the audience. Many raised their hands, but luckily enough, I was seated dead center in the front row, right in front of the mic, and got called on stage, along with my two food-savvy opponents, a woman named Liz and another woman named Chris.

In the first round, Alton asked culinary questions, often bizarre, and we hit our buzzers to answer. Unfortunately, I scored only one point here, and I can't even recall the question. Years of Toastmasters go out the window when you’re in front of a live audience and Alton Brown is the emcee.

For the next round, we each faced individual challenges. These would determine who would reign supreme.

Liz had to identify ingredients that were in one of his famous recipes.
Chris had to identify tins of spices. (Post-segment, one of the producers said this challenge was harder than you’d think. He said that people usually take a big sniff of the first tin, and it’s so overpowering, it throws off their palate for the rest of the segment.)
I had to identify cuts of beef.

I was led to a chalkboard-style diagram of an Angus Beef Chart and tasked with correctly placing a whole slew of beef cut tags -- brisket, chuck, skirt, rib eye, filet, sirloin - into their corresponding areas of the cow. All within a glorious 60 seconds.

The T-bone was especially tricky, because it also includes the filet/tenderloin as well as the strip steak. I am certain I could nail this sitting in the comfort of my own home, but when the pressure is on, things go south quickly!

And yet, I still made second place. My prize: a four-inch golden trophy with the show logo stickered onto the side. Liz, who'd skunked us all in the first contest, won first place.

My time on stage now done, I could sit back and enjoy the ride, but Alton wasn't done with me yet.

Intermission
After intermission came the "spicy segment," in which contestants must eat spicy wings on stage.

A pair of 22-year-old twin girls from Louisiana, who'd also attended the VIP segment, were selected, and powered through some pretty spicy wings with aplomb.

They threw Alton off his game so much, that he approached me in my seat and asked what was in my drink that I'd left sitting on stage. "Vodka," I said. He chugged half my drink and gave me his nutmeg in exchange.

Post show note: Some of us were able to taste the chicken wings. They had a nice heat signature/zing, but they weren’t nearly as hot as you might expect.

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Movie Review

Jessica Chastain drama Dreams stumbles through steamy romance

Photo courtesy of Teorema

Isaac Hernández and Jessica Chastain in Dreams.

The opening scenes of the new drama Dreams are bracing, fictional sequences that call to mind real-life scenarios. In them, a young Mexican man named Fernando (Isaac Hernández) goes through a somewhat harrowing journey from the back of a semi truck in South Texas all the way to San Francisco. It’s a familiar immigrant story that seems to set the stage for a film with something interesting to say.

It turns out, however, that Fernando has not made the long and arduous trek for a job. Instead, it’s to be with Jennifer McCarthy (Jessica Chastain), a rich woman who helps lead a foundation dedicated to multiple things, including funding dance academies. Fernando, a talented dancer, and Jennifer have been in an off-and-on affair for years, with Jennifer wanting to keep their relationship a secret.

Although both are drawn to each other in an inexplicable, lustful way, their bond is tenuous, with each of them dissatisfied for different reasons. Fernando clearly sacrifices much more of himself than Jennifer, who wants for nothing except maybe more affection from her father, Michael (Marshall Bell), and brother, Jake (Rupert Friend).

Writer/director Michel Franco seems to try to inject tension into Fernando and Jennifer’s relationship from the start, an attempt that is only halfway successful. It’s clear from the way they greet each other - not to mention a steamy sex scene shortly thereafter - that they have known each other for a good length of time. Franco is able to get across this familiarity with an economy of scenes, and the intensity of their bond holds for a while.

But as the film progresses and both of them grow disenchanted with their arrangement, Franco starts taking the story in some odd directions. The biggest issue is that it’s never clear at what point in time the story is taking place. Fernando ends up making multiple trips back and forth across the border, with Jennifer doing the same at one point, and Franco’s use of flashbacks muddies the waters, wrong-footing the audience when he should be trying to draw them further into Fernando and Jennifer’s complications.

Revelations in the final act make the story even more confusing, as both main characters start saying and doing harsh things that seem to come out of nowhere. That would be all well and good if Franco actually committed to their changes of heart, but he keeps things wishy-washy for most of the final 15 minutes, resulting in an ending that makes little sense for either character.

Despite the story issues, both Chastain and Hernández give compelling performances. Chastain has been a little under the radar since winning an Oscar for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but she keeps this character interesting longer than it should have been. Hernández has limited credits and appears to have been cast for his dancing ability, but he goes toe-to-toe with Chastain on more than one occasion and acquits himself well.

Dreams had all of the ideas to explore a more in-depth story about the complicated immigration policies between Mexico and the U.S., or how wealthy people take advantage of those less fortunate. But Franco never finds the right footing, settling instead for a titillating and somewhat mystifying relationship story that feels half-baked.

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Dreams is now playing in select theaters.

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