We’ve been watching Alton Brown on TV for years. We watched Good Eats nigh-on religiously, watched Next Iron Chef when there was nothing else Alton-y to watch, and watch and love Cutthroat kitchen.

We’re the sort of people that brine our turkey every year; I make biscuits by Alton’s recipe for our soup and we do own two of Alton’s cookbooks. I think it’s fair to say we’re fans.

So when the live show was coming to Hershey, PA, well… that’s only four hours away. We’ve driven three and a half hours to Albany three times between September and October (there was a wedding); we can drive to Hershey.

T and I don’t take many vacations. We used to do conventions with the Camarilla™, back when we belonged to said world-wide live-action Roleplaying game, and we did Dragon*Con once – in neither case did we pick the hotel. We’ve turned weddings into vacations for ourselves – again, we didn’t pick the hotel. I think this may be the first time we’ve chosen the hotel… ever.

Ahem. Alton Brown.

The show was awesome. I hadn’t done a lot of research about it, so I didn’t go in expecting anything in particular – but it was everything I could have wanted. He ranted about food, he did wild food tricks, he sang. It was two hours of pure Alton.

My only sad point? He took audience questions via twitter w/ selfie. Awesome… except for the 1% of us (me) that came sans smart phone.

But all in all – awesome show. I don’t think we learned anything about cooking, but we had a lot of fun. (Also, in his song about EZ Bake ovens, I got to examine how lucky we are to live in a sub-sub-culture where the fact that my husband does 9/10 of the cooking is entirely acceptable.)

Back to the hotel. So, I was a little hesitant about staying in a Howard Johnson (hotel snob), but it was the only one on the main drag that was a) well-reviewed and b) had a king-sized bed. So.

Turns out, it has a phenomenal restaurant underneath, and an absolutely tasty brunch place right next door. So not only did we get to listen to our favorite TV-food-personality, we got to eat delicious food, too!

All in all, a very good vacation, & back home in time to feed the kitties.

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