Alton Brown in New Orleans

Ashley was disappointed with the recently aired episode of Feasting on Asphalt on the Food Network. If you haven't seen the show, it's basically Alton Brown traveling the countryside on a motorcycle in search of "authentic American road food" or something like that. It's not a bad concept and Brown's other show Good Eats is by far the best thing on that channel.

The episode in question.. obviously.. featured Brown and his bikers stopping in New Orleans, Hammond, LaPlace, and Vacherie, on their way up the River Road. The show was inconsistent. But I liked it better than Ashley who points out that Brown seemed surprisingly unfamiliar with the local culture... mystified at the difference between Cajun and Creole culture.. and, worse, expecting to find Southern style sweet tea in New Orleans. The following was supposed to be a comment on Ashley's blog but it got too long so I'm putting it here.. I'm sure he'll read it anyway.

I hate sweet tea... mostly because I tend to take my iced tea at whatever restaurant I'm patronizing whilst attempting to shake off the hangover. In other words.. iced tea for me is kind of a bloody mary for the days when you don't want to drink again. If it were sugary.. it would cause me great distress.

I wasn't as disappointed with Alton in New Orleans. The show is about "road food" after all.. which means that you're not talking so much about high end stuff as you are casual grab-n-go type food. I imagine they ended up at Mulate's because they asked someone where they could find something not-too-fancy. I think Alton was appropriately annoyed by the tourists. I hate those people.. but you knew that already.

The Big Fisherman was a good location. I would have liked to see him go perhaps to a decent po-boy stop.. Parasol's maybe? And I think Hansen's sno balls would have fit the theme.

I thought the stops along the river road were very appropriate.. although I would have liked to see some gas-station boudin show up as everyone knows it to be the ultimate road food of South Louisiana.

I get the feeling.. though.. that very few of the locations are actually planned in advance. So considering that, they did a decent job.

The complete misapprehension of Cajun vs Creole is less forgivable. One would expect a professional culinary expert to at least understand that much. Still, I like Alton Brown. He's pretty much the only thing worth watching on an increasingly unwatchable Food Network.