Alton Brown did a sushi show!
I was thisclose to sending an e-mail through his website, asking if/when he’d do a sushi show. Not only was I curious about how he would approach sushi, I wanted to see what kind of silly antics he would along the way.
In terms of entertainment, this show didn’t crack me up the way new episodes this summer have. I loved the whole Silence of the Lambs spoof with Koko Karl in last week’s health food episode, and having W dress up as genie for the jerky episode cracked me up.
The sushi show was, however, packed with information, some of it I knew, some of it I didn’t, so in this case, the educational bits squeezed out the comedy bits. The sushi chef they used between sequences, though, was pretty hot. Will he be the new mad French chef? Oh, I hope so.
Two things made me pause, though. In one of the earliest episodes dealing with rice, he goes through this whole routine with W about rice cookers, only to toss it out of the window in this episode. A unitasker? Didn’t that earlier episode state rice cookers could be used for other things?
Then he put wasabi in his maki and nigiri. That shit is strong, and little goes a long, long way. Putting it in a roll sits as well with me as putting in mayonaise. (Bleah.)
Still, this episode will go on my must-watch list — if forced to chose between an episode of Law & Order or The West Wing against the sushi episode, I’d go for the sushi episode. (Unless, of course, it’s “Two Cathedrals” were talking about.)
Food Network aired his wonton episode afterward, and it’s another on the list mainly for the fact that, um, it’s the closest thing AB gets to being barechested.