![]() “Tyler was always packing up to leave for New York,” Osteen says. In fact, Florence got loose from Charleston at age 22 (fresh out of Johnson & Wales) on an assist by Louis Osteen, who made a call to Charlie Palmer at Aureole in Manhattan, landing Florence his first cooking job in the big city. ![]() It was pretty obvious he was going somewhere quick,” he says. ![]() Barickman remembers him in 1991 as “an energetic powerhouse of a line cook who went at it from every direction. Both chefs, Florence contends, influenced the way he cooks today.įlorence made an impression on his mentors as well. Barickman, on the other hand, was inclined to throw Southern ingredients in a jar, shake them, and see what came out. A fried green tomato would be served with a spray of sea salt-nothing more. Florence describes Osteen as a classicist who looked to the past for sources of inspiration and gripped tradition hard. ![]() It was after culinary school that he first experienced Southern regional cuisine in concept and execution, doing a year of kitchen time each under Donald Barickman at Magnolias and Louis Osteen, then of Louis’ Charleston Grill-two chefs with two very different takes on the same foodways. (Last year, Johnson & Wales in Providence awarded him an honorary doctorate, an event Florence characterizes as a high point in his career.) “I fell in love with the craft of cooking,” he says, “which had nothing to do with Southern food.” In 1989, he came to Charleston to attend Johnson & Wales University, graduating in 1991. In high school, Florence began working at the Fishmarket, a French restaurant in Greenville (and by his account “the hottest place in town”), where he got hooked on the hustle and flow of restaurant work at the pot sink. Every weekend was a history lesson in Southern food.” “Going to see my grandparents,” he says, “was like going back 50 years. He is 34 years old.Īnd why shouldn’t he do Soul Food? Florence grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, in a culture he describes as “suburban skateboard.” But his culinary yearnings went on past the asphalt and into the rural South-to his maternal grandmother’s kitchen garden near High Point, North Carolina (a region known for laying splendid tables), for instance, or to his paternal grandfather’s smokehouse near Lincolnton, Georgia. He has written two cookbooks, Tyler Florence’s Real Kitchen and Eat This Book, and is poised to close a deal on a restaurant in lower Manhattan. His next Food Network series (details on ice pending a formal launch) is in pre-production. Employed by the Food Network full-time since 1999, Florence has, to his credit, 300 episodes of Food 911 36 episodes of a globetrotting series called Tyler’s Ultimate and four seasons hosting the show How to Boil Water. If the construct seems skewed, no one seems to care-certainly not Tyler Florence.Ī South Carolina native and rising media star, Tyler Florence (the subtly insistent double trochée in his name, TY-ler FLOR-ence, suggests the Southern patrician), has plenty of cause for confidence. The woman, who’s learning to cook it, is black. You’re watching Food 911, Tyler Florence’s no-nonsense, to-the-rescue Food Network series. “It’s Tiffany,” Diana remarks, to which Florence replies, “That may be a Tiffany bracelet, but this is gonna be a Gucci fried chicken.” “I hate it when that happens,” Florence says. “Know how much this manicure cost?” she asks, adding, “Look, now the flour’s getting all in my bracelet.” At Florence’s urging, Diana dips brined, floured chicken parts into buttermilk, then back into seasoned flour. Standing by with a bowl of flour, Florence prompts Diana through a regimen of flavoring agents designed to punch up the breading’s impact-onion and garlic powders, paprika, black pepper. The woman, whose name is Diana, says her breading “won’t stick.” Says she takes grief from her church group about her cooking. Tyler Florence is teaching a woman to fry chicken.
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