Alton Brown Explains Why He Traded The Food Network For Netflix

It seems Alton Brown is officially done with the Food Network, despite it being his home for the past twenty-one years.

Brown first joined the Food Network in the 1990s, where he serves as the host and creator of “Good Eats.” He was also the host of “Iron Chef,” “Cutthroat Kitchen,” and several other shows.

Instead, he has moved over to the streaming giant Netflix, where the new iteration of “Iron Chef,” dubbed “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend” premiered earlier this week.

Brown recently told Variety that after he heard Netflix was interested in rebooting “Iron Chef” a few years ago, he immediately wanted to get involved.

Brown said that it “was not a hard decision” to trade the Food Network for Netflix. He told Variety that it “took a little bit of convincing on a lot of different people’s parts. But I knew that the show was going to be happening, and I was sick with jealousy over the idea that I was at the wrong network at the wrong time.”

“One day, my agent finally called me up after I had nagged him almost daily, and that was it. It was done,” he recalled. “There was never a second thought for me. It meant removing myself from one network, but that was not a hard decision. The timing just worked out that I was able to extricate myself from that.”

Brown now co-hosts the new “Iron Chef” with Kristen Kish, who won the tenth season of top chef. Mark Dacascos is also back as the chairman who introduces a secret ingredient at the beginning of every episode. Variety reports that the cast of Iron Chefs includes Curtis Stone, Marcus Samuelsson, Dominique Crenn, Gabriela Camara, and Ming Tsai.

The “Iron Chef” series debuted on the Food Network in 2005 and aired for 13 seasons. However, after the network chose not to renew it for another season, it later moved to Netflix.

When asked about the differences between the two networks, Brown said that the primary difference is “that there’s not a commercial break every four minutes, and that changes the storytelling a great deal.”

He said the lack of commercials “allows for more nuanced storytelling, so that’s a huge game changer.”

He said that he believes it’s “going to open up a big dimension of what the real value of the series is.” He added that the second difference is “because it’s streaming, people can binge the whole thing and that allows us story arcs that are longer than just one episode. From a storytelling standpoint, it’s just radically different.”

When asked if Netflix created more of a “global tone to the show,” Brown shared that they were all excited about the “globalness” of Netflix.

“I feel that the roster, which a lot of thought went into, is a snapshot of American ‘culinaryism’ that I am proud of,” Brown explained, adding, “I think that it represents the continent in a way that is brave and accurate and experiential and talented.”

He added, “I think that the series was retooled and evolved in a very mature and international way that will hopefully have a lot of impact.”

Brown also said that this is his favorite iteration of the show for “a few reasons.”

“One, we finally have enough budget to do it right. We finally were able to have a set that was as big as it ought to be and a kitchen as grand as it ought to be,” he explained. “I think that finally having two hosts, which was never something that we were able to make happen in the previous iteration, is a huge upgrade.”

“And we have really great ingredients; shooting here in California is a very different thing from shooting in New York,” he added. “And my trailer is bigger — much better than my dressing room was at Food Network.”

“Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend” is currently available to stream on Netflix.