"Feasting on Asphalt" news and stories

Today I'm featuring a book that isn't even out yet, so I don't actually have my hands on it and can't tell you about my personal experience with it. But I am really excited for it to arrive, mostly because I LOVED the show that it is accompanying. Have you figured it out yet (as if the title of this post and the picture to the right didn't already tip you off). I'm talking about Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run.

What excites me so much is that this book will contain not just the recipes from the trip, but also lots of images of the towns they stopped in, the food they ate, the people they met and the mighty Mississippi that they road along for the entire trip. I love cookbooks that tell stories and I'm even more thrilled if those stories are accompanied by lots of vivid images and so I know that I'm going to love this book.

I don't normally ask questions in the Cookbook of the Day post, but I'm curious. Is there, or has there ever been, a cookbook that you've found yourself really looking forward to?

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I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but last summer I was totally glued to Alton Brown's summer road trip show, Feasting on Asphalt. So you'll understand just how thrilled I was to learn that he's done it again this summer, this time hitting the road in the Mississippi Gulf states. The Food Network is rerunning last summer's series all week, in order to get us fans all juiced up and ready for the new season. The first fresh episode premieres Saturday night at 9 pm and I believe that it will deliver all the grit, fried food and gorgeous views that I've come to expect from AB's forays into reality food television. I can't wait.

Today's New York Times features a review of Alton Brown's new road food series Feasting on Asphalt, which premiers tomorrow on the Food Network. NYT television critic Virginia Heffernan has apparently grown tired of food shows that exalt gritty American fare and she sees Brown's new series as the latest example. The piece is actually one of the more negative reviews of Brown that I can recall reading. By the end, Heffernan indirectly critiques AB for trying to "capitalize on the down-home food craze and create a franchise." I've yet to see the show, so I can't offer my own opinion of its content, but I don't think Heffernan's criticism is totally unfounded. Still, it could probably be applied to any number of contemporary cookbook authors or food celebrities. Yes, there are plenty of road food shows, likely inspired by writers like the Sterns or Calvin Trillin, and those shows are there because viewers have shown a growing interest in regional food. Is there something wrong with that?