"food wars" news and stories

For Food Network star Tyler Florence, good things have been coming in threes this year: In addition to launching a third gourmet food shop, he's ambitiously opening not one but three California restaurants, including San Francisco's Wayfare Tavern, Mill Valley's El Paseo and a Napa rotisserie shop, all the while juggling three kids, a new television show and his involvement with Wishbone salad dressings, delivering healthy salad recipes through a series of online cooking demonstration videos.

But Florence, 39, isn't daunted by the challenge, he admitted Tuesday night at a Wishbone-sponsored "Salad Night Live" event in NYC. "We started planting seeds there [for the restaurants] years ago and they're all coming up at the same time. Plus, buying in bulk to get a better price is a financial incentive. We're capable."

Capable indeed. With an impressive culinary background that stems from his start in professional kitchens at age 15, to a flourishing line of successful cookbooks and organic baby food, to his rise to fame as a Food Network chef and host, Florence is as at home in front of the camera -- having recently hosted the Travel Channel's upcoming Food Wars series -- as in his private kitchen. He reminisces back to his culinary start, when the Food Network "had two cameras and that was the whole network... And it was really bad, but I loved every minute of it!"