Alton Brown is bringing Good Eats back to its hungry fanbase, sort of, and it's returning to Food Network in a big way! After months of vague teases, Brown finally revealed the new project's certifiable existence, sharing some details with fans at his panel at this past weekend's Dragon Con, including the new show's new name and some other exciting tidbits, below:
(It's) called Return Of The Eats. We're bringing it back, we're restarting it, we're getting the band back together! It will be a television show in the half-hour category there on Food Network, but we'll also be shooting additional scenes that will be injected into each show for streaming. So if you watch it online, you will see a better show.
The only bad news here, which Alton Brown humorously delivered to fans at the panel, is that Return Of The Eats will force Food Network to restrict Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives to only "seven-and-a-half hours" a day. (In the network's and Fieri's defense, Food Network does break that scheduling up a bit with Guy's Grocery Games, but Brown's point about the flagship show is well-taken.) The bottom line, in either case, is that Food Network needs more programming between its two networks, and Alton Brown bringing back a revitalized version of Good Eats is a great start to making that happen.
The first run of Good Eats received plenty of critical acclaim, and even scored Alton Brown and others a Peabody award in 2006 for presenting science in such an entertaining and delicious manner. Brown officially ended the show in 2012 after 250 episodes, citing the need for a break from the hours of extensive research that went into every episode. After about six years of touring with his Alton Brown Live-Eat Your Science cooking show and playing a calculating host on shows like Cutthroat Kitchen, Brown apparently has enough in the research tank to dive back into the demanding workload that is Return Of The Eats.
As mentioned before, this isn't the first time Alton Brown has teased bringing back Good Eats. In fact, around this time last year, he was trying to get a similar-sounding project, A Cooking Show, off the ground. This past spring, Brown took to social media to make an informal announcement that a more freeing version of Good Eats was on the way. And about a month before his Dragon Con announcement, Brown uploaded the YouTube video below, which appeared to cryptically alert fans Good Eats was on the verge of a comeback:
No word has been given as to when to expect Return Of The Eats, since Food Network wasn't a part of the panel, but Alton Brown has confirmed the series will be both on linear TV and streaming, so we might get to see more online goodies before the proper premiere. Those in search of other new cooking shows should pop over to our fall premiere guide to see what's making waves in the next couple of months. We also have a Netflix guide that may also be a handy resource for foodies looking for snack-inspiring shows.
