Before receiving the box set for Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run I was not familiar with the show. I was familiar with Alton thanks to his other show Good Eats and because of his work on Iron Chef America, but I had not had the pleasure of watching this show until the DVD arrived.

Alton is definitely one of the more interesting hosts on Food Network. One of the most impressive things about him is that he seems to know everything about food. His shows are also quite different than the average Food TV fare. While most of the shows offer a standard kitchen setting (whether live or taped) and a host that shows you how to cook the meal or food item of choice, Brown’s shows not only show you how to cook something (in one sense or another), but also how to eat it, as well as giving you more food knowledge about the item then you will probably ever need! Brown brings Science and History into the kitchen and makes cooking entertaining in a way that it wasn’t before.

The idea of Feasting on Asphalt was to mix Brown’s love for traveling and motorcycles with his love for food. The entire idea is for a group of travelers, led by Brown, to experience the best regional foods that an area has to offer. This leaves behind all of the corporate eateries that have taken over and allows the group to explore all of the small, yet famous spots with food that you can only imagine unless you’ve been lucky enough to taste it.

This three disc set offers the second season, which is known as The River Run. Apparently, in the first season the group went from East to West across the country. This time around they followed the Mississippi River, from Louisiana to where it ends in Minnesota. Along the way, they sampled the best of everything and offered a nice bit of education on all the good eats that they got to try.

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