Duff Goldman presents The Tao of Duff

Duff Goldman brings his one-man show, The Tao of Duff, to The Texas Theatre on Sunday, October 11. Most of us know him as the 'Ace of Cakes' or from hosting Food Network baking championships—he's been a fixture on food television for nearly twenty years, with books and product lines to match. But this isn't a cooking class or a TV taping. It's a live performance that mixes baking, storytelling, comedy, and improv, all built around the making of his great-grandmother's apple strudel.

Goldman frames the whole thing as a mix of art and craft, and as an analog, human alternative to a world of robot overlords and digital algorithms. That's a good way to set the stage, because the show draws on the women of his family. He talks about his great-grandmother, who came to America from Ukraine and became a milliner and hat-shop owner in Wichita, Kansas; his grandmother, a silversmith, enamelsmith, and photographer who was good friends with Georgia O'Keeffe; and his mother, who ran a pottery studio in Venice Beach in the sixties and later became a stained-glass artist. It's part history lesson, part baking demonstration, and part stand-up, with the strudel as the thread that ties it together.

Before the cakes and the TV, Goldman was a graffiti artist and a metal sculptor, and you can still see that background in how he treats baking as a form of making. The show is presented by Spune as a Dallas stop on a multi-city national tour, so it's one of the few times he'll be doing this in person around here. It's a one-man show, which means the baking, the stories, and the comedy all come from him on stage.

The Tao of Duff plays upstairs at The Texas Theatre on Sunday, October 11, starting at 8 PM, with doors opening at 7 PM.