Tyler Florence, Still Relentless After All These Years, Keeps Building

Chef Tyler Florence says he has an “insatiable curiosity for all things delicious.” And like all things he is passionate about — from writing cookbooks to opening restaurants to hosting cooking shows — Florence is relentless in his pursuit of flavor. In 2005, that pursuit took place in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Florence had just moved into his “very groovy bachelor pad” on the edge of the neighborhood, and it was a cook’s dream: Nearby markets overflowed with fresh produce piled high on low tables, and the fish markets had more kinds of seafood than he could have imagined. Everywhere he looked, there was something tasty to try. 

“It was a very, very exciting time for me professionally,” recalls Florence. Seven or eight months out of the year, he was filming for Food Network and juggling a nationwide tour for his cookbook Eat This Book. But when he could be home, he’d find culinary inspiration in his backyard. “My ideas were basically from what I was shopping for in my neighborhood,” he remembers. “I was heavily influenced by Chinatown.” 

For F&W’s September 2005 issue, contributor Rob Willey joined Florence at his apartment for a dinner party. The menu incorporated Asian ingredients into Florence’s signature easygoing, seasonally inspired cooking: There were mussels steamed in coconut milk with Thai chiles, ribbons of raw zucchini dressed with miso and nori, and a showstopping grilled skirt steak marinated in a sweet-and-spicy soy glaze and topped with a flavorful shiso-scallion butter.

That steak was a particularly personal recipe, Florence says. He’s loved beef since he had his first taste of filet mignon (that just so happened to be wrapped in bacon) while out to dinner with his mom at The Peddler Steak House in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. The childhood experience helped him find his culinary lane. “I have always loved the steakhouse genre,” he says.

Today, Florence explores how beef can reflect terroir at his steakhouse concept, Miller & Lux in San Francisco and Hawaii. He partners with DemKota, a cattle ranch in Aberdeen, South Dakota, to curate custom premium cuts for both locations.

Revisiting that steak recipe now, Florence has decided to make a few changes: replacing hoisin sauce with gochujang, adding lemon juice, and reducing the brown sugar. But overall, he still loves the dish, and the versatile Korean-inspired marinade has become a benchmark recipe in his repertoire. “My God, is it good,” he says.

The skirt steak sops up the marinade, which caramelizes on the grill to create “an almost smash-burger texture where you get the crispy, the caramelized, and the fat melt.” Swap the skirt steak for chicken thighs, pork chops, or meaty mushrooms, says Florence. 

In the 2005 story, Willey remarked on Florence’s “casual intensity.” It’s a trait that has continued to propel Florence’s career in the two decades since that dinner party in Chinatown — and helped him keep his many projects intact through economic ups and downs and the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m just so satisfied,” he says. “We’ve fought, climbed, struggled, and survived everything that happened. And we’ve never been better.”

These days, he’s just as busy as ever, running his restaurants, writing books, headlining events like the Food & Wine Classics in Aspen and Charleston, and filming the 18th season of his hit show The Great Food Truck Race for Food Network, which began airing in August. (This year marks Florence’s 29th year with the network.) But at the end of the day, Florence says, he’s still just a chef. “I love to cook. I am never afraid to roll my sleeves up, get in the kitchen, and do what it takes to make sure everything lives up to that level of excellence.”