THE CRISP WHISPERER
Innovative chef Tyler Florence tinkers with his grandmother’s chicken recipe, enhancing the batter with herbs to create a time-honored yet thoroughly modern staple.
Maybe it’s the years of television appearances, but Tyler Florence comes across as an irresistibly likable guy.
He’s a seasoned professional in the art of appearing totally laid back while simultaneously making business ventures that have turned him into a household name, with the restaurants, cookbooks, Food Network shows, Costco food line and babyfood company to show for it.
The South Carolina native moved from New York to Northern California in 2007 to be closer to his wife’s family. Life there suited him, and the bounty that he discovered — locally made cheeses, outrageously good vegetables and fruit all year round — only deepened his simpleis-best approach to food and cooking.
It’s a philosophy that’s evident at his San Francisco restaurant, Wayfare Tavern. The menu has enough familiar dishes that it avoids challenging the businessmen and tourists who, hoping to catch a glimpse of Florence, crowd the space nightly.
The mainstays include deviled eggs, a righteous burger, creamed spinach and towering wedges of coconut layer cake. But the ingredients are good and sourced locally, and Florence is relentlessly curious.
He tinkers with even the most straightforward, time-honored dishes, improving them through innovation and experimentation.
His fried chicken is an example. Florence recently posted a photo of it on his Instagram feed, noting that the restaurant had served 148 orders of it on a recent Wednesday.
Its popularity is no surprise. The generously seasoned flour dredge is based on his grandmother’s (“Hers was so well seasoned the flour looked brown,” he recalls) and includes onion and garlic powders, a good amount of salt and a small amount of rice flour, which ensures a crisp crust.
It’s just as good eaten at room temperature as it is when it’s hot.
At Wayfare Tavern, the kitchen first cooks the chicken sous vide, then soaks the pieces in buttermilk before dredging and frying to order. The initial slow cooking keeps the chicken exceptionally juicy and cuts the frying time to about six minutes instead of the 20 or so it would take if you started with raw chicken.
Knowing that sous vide cooking isn’t part of most home cooks’ tool kits, Florence developed a home hack: slow-roasting the whole chicken at 200 degrees, then cutting it into pieces and soaking it in buttermilk and finally dredging and frying.
He rubs the chicken with fresh sage, thyme, rosemary, bay and garlic before it roasts, then infuses the frying oil with more of the same herbs, frying whole sprigs, leaves and cloves.
Florence piles the fried chicken on a wooden cutting board, crowns it with a wreath of fried herbs and garlic, and leans lemon wedges against the stack. He flashes that winning Florence grin as he presents the craggy, golden chicken.
Like Florence himself, it’s hard to resist its charms.