Alton Brown Biography

Alton Brown was born on July 30, 1962, in Los Angeles, California, to Alton Brown, Sr., who was a media executive, owner of the radio station WRWH and publisher of the newspaper 'White County News'.

When he was very young, his father was found dead in his home in 1974, allegedly a suicide, and shortly after, his mother remarried. Despite his disgruntled childhood, Brown earned a degree in drama from the University of Georgia.

Thereafter, he took to cinematography and film production and made his living through it. He did the cinematography for some important videos in the 1990s, like that for 'The One I Love', a song by the famous rock band R.E.M.

He worked in film productions for over a decade but his heart was always with cooking, the love that was inducted into him by his mother. He used to watch cookery shows passionately.

After making up his mind that he wanted to pursue cooking professionally and creatively and that the cookery shows on television were not doing justice to this art, he enrolled himself at New England Culinary Institute and graduated in 1997.

From 1999-2011, his show 'Good Eats' ran on the Food Network and Cooking Channel. He created the show keeping in mind that people need to get educated about the science and technique behind cooking.

The show ran for almost 12 years, making Brown a prominent celebrity chef in the television industry. His show received a Peabody Award in 2006 and was nominated for the Best TV Food Journalism Award.

In 2004, he appeared as an expert commentator on the cooking show called 'Iron Chef America: Battle of the Masters'. Due to his increasing popularity on the show, he hosted the next four seasons of its spin-off 'The Next Iron Chef'.

Brown's third cooking series 'Feasting on Asphalt' came out on Food Network in 2006. The series ran for three seasons until 2008 under different titles 'Feasting on Asphalt 2: The River Run' and 'Feasting on Waves'.

In 2007-2008, his fame on reality television became his ticket to many versatile projects. He was the guest programmer on Turner Classic Movies and guest starred on Nickelodeon's TV series 'SpongeBob SquarePants'.

With his well-proven expertise in cooking on television, he mentored on the Season 8 of ˜The Next Food Network Star' in 2012. During the same time, he appeared in episodes of 'MythBusters'.

Around the same time, he became an internet craze with the use of witty 'Analog Tweets'. He posted the hand-drawn pictures as the Twitter responses on 'Post-it notes' which he had stuck to his computer screen.

In 2013, he hosted a reality cooking television show 'Cutthroat Kitchen'. The show is about 4 chefs with $25,000 each, which they have to use to bid during competition and take the remaining cash as prize money with them.

Around the same time, he became a part of 'The Layover' on the Travel Channel. He also joined the Nerdist Podcast Network with 'The Alton Browncast'.

Brown also appeared in the spin-off series, ‘Good Eats: Reloaded.’ The show premiered in 2018 and ran for 2 seasons. It went off-air in 2020.

In 2019, Brown revived his series ‘Good Eats’ (now named Good Eats: The Return) for another season and was aired on the Food Network. The next season of ‘Good Eats: The Return’ premiered on Discovery+ in early 2021. However, the show returned to the Food Network in June 2021. In the following month, Brown announced the end of the Good Eats program.

He gained popularity as a charismatic celebrity chef who insisted on teaching the technical aspects of cooking, from his first show 'Good Eats', which ran for almost 12 years and made him into a TV star.

Brown lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife and daughter Zoey, who appeared on 'Good Eats' and was known as 'Alton's Spawn' on the show. He is a motorcycle enthusiast and a pilot.

Brown lost weight and became healthier in 2009. He announced his weight loss and described the details of it on "Live and Let Diet" of 'Good Eats'.

He is a trained pilot and owns two planes - a Cessna 206 and a Cessna 414.

He is the author of many books including, 'I'm Just Here for the Food', which won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Cookbook, and was one of the best-selling cookbooks of 2002.