This is Tyler Florence’s world, and we’re merely happy actors and guests in his elaborate and tasty show.
Zegna Vicuna brown cashmere overshirt via Wilkes Bashford, @wilkesbashford, and vintage gold watch via Gleim the Jeweler, gleimjewelers.com
It’s nearly 5 p.m. on a rainy, windy evening at Miller & Lux (@millerandlux), and Tyler Florence (@tylerflorence) wants to discuss the future of the San Francisco food scene and everything else under the culinary sun.
We sit across from each other in a leather corner banquette. The window rises at Florence’s back as he faces his expansive, gilded dining room designed by legendary Bay Area designer Ken Fulk. Waitstaff glides through the aisles, prepping tables, lighting candles and carefully placing silverware atop crisp, white frette tablecloths. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin provide the soundtrack. Gold and white balloons rise like mylar bouquets from several booths. It’s another buzzy night of anniversaries, birthdays and first dates at Florence’s Chase Center outpost.
“I like to create an experience where people come into our restaurant and star in their own version of a wonderful film. We give them the backdrop to create the experience,” Florence says. “Every night, a guest in one of our restaurants gets a chance to finish the sentence in our story.”
If guests are the actors in this cinematic evening, then Florence is the executive producer and director. It’s a story with many plot twists. The chef, originally from Greenville, S.C., is a grad of the prestigious culinary program at Johnson & Wales University and a two-time James Beard Award nominee. He oversees Miller & Lux and Wayfare Tavern in SF, Tyler Florence’s Fresh at SFO, Miller & Lux Provisions at Union Square and the newly opened Miller & Lux at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai. The chef celebrates 27 years on the Food Network with his 17th season of The Great Food Truck Race this month. He recently released American Grill, a book coinciding with our collective warm-weather affection for spending time outside next to small fires cooking everything from ribs to rainbow trout to portobello mushrooms.
During our hourlong chat—again, ahead of a packed-housed Friday evening—Florence isn’t distracted by any of these projects or the restaurant hustle in front of him. He doesn’t check his watch. He doesn’t look over my shoulder or glance at his phone. The blue-eyed chef is locked in, living in this delicious moment.
Maurizio Baldassari Brera navy knit swacket via Wilkes Bashford, @wilkesbashford, and Eton pique button-down shirt, etonshirts.com
Every chef has an origin story. What’s yours?
I started washing dishes in a Greenville restaurant when I was 15 years old. It was the nicest restaurant in my hometown—super swanky with a classic French menu. It was the first time I ever tasted lobster and hollandaise sauce. I loved the theater of it all— the curtain call and opening up at 6 p.m. for dinner.
I see the theatrical moments happening in this restaurant right now.
Trying to be great every night is a high bar to hit. It’s very organic and involves 53 people who must be in great shape, mentally clear and ready to give everything they have. We’re here for one mission: to make everyone fall in love with a restaurant as soon as they walk through the door.
Ken Fulk designed this place. It feels like a movie set.
I specifically didn’t want loose tables in the room. I wanted booths where every table was a power table—like the restaurant wrapped its arms around you. I just love that. I wanted to bring glamour back to the dining scene in San Francisco.
You obviously back up the glam with your food. Brag a little. Tell me how you and your kitchen team set yourselves apart.
Our steaks are sourced from a ranch partner in South Dakota, and they are some of the best in the city; the cows are grass-fed, and the marbling is spectacular, with flavor that’s truly distinct from corn-fed beef.
We fly in lobster from Maine and big pink jumbo shrimp from Louisiana. Our Dover sole is cryogenically frozen in liquid nitrogen, which doesn’t disrupt its cell structure, and is flown from Europe every two days. When you sear most frozen fish, it’s a wet mess. But this fish is as fresh as the ocean and easy to sear. It’s deboned tableside and is spectacular.
I’m intrigued by your approach to serving oysters.
They come from Tomales Bay, and we keep them alive in an estuary in our kitchen. The estuary mimics the ocean’s pH balance. So, the oysters aren’t stressed, and you can taste the sweet brininess in every single one.
You have an obvious affection for San Francisco, and I heard it started with a Visa commercial decades ago.
[Laughter] When I was a kid, there was a TV commercial about San Francisco’s Fog City Diner. I was 8 years old when it aired, and it’s the reason I’m a chef—and the reason I’m a chef in San Francisco. [Florence grabs his phone and shows me the commercial on YouTube. The script includes, “…it’s a place where people reserve tables weeks in advance to taste great curry mussels and grilled chicken with roasted peppers…”
You believe in San Francisco’s viability as a food town and a great world city.
The pandemic was earthshattering and financially devastating to many of our colleagues in the hospitality industry. Coming out of this, we owe it to ourselves to reshape the world that we want to live in and start pushing forward with a new vision.
We’re still a world-class city. I think it’s all about having a positive message and refusing to pile on with the negative onslaught of seemingly never-ending stories of just doom and gloom. Every piece of bad press the city’s gotten, we deserved. But a new day has dawned. And when it comes to hospitality, it’s about telling the stories of one neighborhood, one restaurant and one chef at a time.
You’ve used your platform at the Food Network to do some of this preaching, yes?
I’m definitely leveraging my 27 years of hard work on the Food Network to share what it means to be a chef— specifically in San Francisco, where we ride the brilliant coattails of pioneers like Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower and those who started the farmto- table movement. They laid the groundwork for one of the greatest dining destinations in the world. We can’t abandon that. I think the hospitality industry will actually save San Francisco. We were here before the pandemic. We were the only thing here during the pandemic. And we will be the first economic boom to come out of it.
The beef at Miller & Lux is among the best in the city.
Let’s talk about your new book, American Grill. Where did your passion for grilling begin?
Because I’m from South Carolina, I grew up with barbecue sauce in my baby bottle. I love grilling. It’s my love language. It brings people together. Have you ever walked through a neighborhood and caught the scent of smoke wafting from a grill? It’s magic.
For the book, although all 125 recipes are amazing, we took 25 recipes that we knew would be megahits and re-tested them up to five times to ensure they worked perfectly for anyone. They’re recipes like wild Alaskan salmon grilled on a cedar plank with a perfect teriyaki sauce.
I sense you were at home when you stepped on the Food Network set. Where did this natural camera-facing skill come from?
I grew up with television in a weird way. My mom was the head accountant for the local NBC station in Greenville. So every quarter, when she closed the books on weekends, my older brother Warren and I would tag along to hang out at the station. We sat in the director’s booth and watched them make cuts to certain cameras for the news. It was fascinating.
When I got my first opportunity to do a guest appearance on the Food Network, I walked into a studio in midtown Manhattan and knew everyone’s job. I think either you feel like you want to be on television or you don’t. And if you want to be on television, it’s a honed skill—hands-and-pans cooking. Those three minutes are all about telling a great short story.
How do you sustain 17 seasons of The Great Food Truck Race?
Our showrunners and directors are brilliant. They cast incredibly interesting and fun people—and they look like a great big slice of the American pie. There’s always someone you’re going to cheer for, and there’s always someone you’re going to absolutely dislike. That makes compelling TV.
What are you excited about next?
I hope to start a culinary and hospitality institution in San Francisco that rivals Cornell. It’s important to have a fortified institution of higher learning here, one that turns out top talent from the back of the house to management teams, where we have a never-ending supply of young people who want to celebrate San Francisco. That will be my next big mission on top of everything else we’re doing because, you know, you get to the point where you start working on a legacy. The TV stuff is great, but I want to start thinking about what I’ll leave behind.
Not so fast. Rumor has it you have more restaurant surprises before the end of the year.
I can’t talk about them, but we’re doubling down on the city. It has taken us 15 years to get here—an overnight success [laughter]. I’ve never been prouder of my team. If it weren’t for my wife, Tolan, who is from this area and the reason I’m in California, and people like our operations director, Dawn Agnew, and our chief of staff, Donna Perreault and every single team member, we wouldn’t have achieved any of this. It truly takes a culinary village, man.
Photography by: Photographed by Tracy Easton; Styled by Theresa Palmer, A Palmer in California
