Alton Brown - Feasting in Asphalt - Season 2

As a child traveling cross-country with his parents, from California to Georgia, young Alton Brown saw first-hand how regional food in America changed with the landscape. The seeds for a future television show were planted on that fateful trip. Several decades later, this experience of a young boy took root as Alton pitched a new travel food show idea to Food Network executives.

Feasting on Asphalt, adult Alton’s cross-country journey on a motorcycle, sought to re-discover real American food. Through his travels from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean, Alton found what he feared was lost—authentic food. What Alton showed us in Feasting on Asphalt was not the corporate restaurant chains sprawling across America, but honest food prepared by people with a passion for it.

Feasting on Asphalt opening monologue:
Nothing plucks the heartstrings of the American Spirit like an open road. Oh, I’m not taking about those rivers of concrete, which lure us with stable speeds and zero surprises. I’m talking about the highways and byways that really stitch this crazy quilt of a county together. Why, on roads this anything can happen. Consider cuisine. Interstates give you culinary conformity. But out here favors change with the contours of land. And words like hospitality take on old meanings. Why, I bet down around that curve there’s a café, diner, tearoom or truck stop where the waitress still call you hun and the cooks… actually cook! How do I know? I don’t. But I got a map and a motorcycle and a month to find out. I’m Alton Brown and this is Feasting on Asphalt.