‘I don’t build new restaurants’: an interview with Tyler Florence
As a child, the chef and television host Tyler Florence had 42 different listed allergies. It wasn’t until he was 13 years old that he tasted melted cheese for the first time. “I had a very weird early diet. I could only eat and drink things like salmon, lentils, goat’s milk.” As a teen, he finally outgrew the allergies and tried foods most kids had been eating their whole lives. “It was like an explosion – all the flavors and the textures. I couldn’t get enough of it.” His first job was as a dishwasher at the Fish Market restaurant in Greenville, South Carolina. “It was the nicest restaurant in town. All the waiters had tuxedos and cummerbunds. It was the 1980s, so there were pink tablecloths and fish tanks in the dining room.
