Tyler Florence has spotted a tom turkey, one of two dozen meandering in the driveway of the home he shares with his wife, Tolan, and three children in her Marin County hometown, just north of San Francisco. “I’ve been outside twice today to get the mail,” he says with a laugh. “This turkey has been eyeballing me!” The bowhunter plans to head to Sonoma the next week to bag one, and if he succeeds, “I’ll smoke it, shred it, and make a big gumbo out of it.” ¶ As the fifty-three-year-old native of Greenville, South Carolina, bounces with enthusiasm between topics—the spring turkey season, his cast-iron collection, the secret to the multistep sous vide fried chicken he serves at his Wayfare Tavern (a dollop of buttermilk brine in the, must come naturally, with no ebbing in sight. “We’ve never been more creative,” Florence says of his team. “Our food has never been better. I feel like we’re kind of turning into this rare 1971 vintage that’s just starting to peak right now.”
