Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Going Wild Oats For Tyler Florence

Posted Apr 5, 2006 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 5, 2006 at 09:01 AM

In the first installment of a new nutrition column I’m doing, (go ahead and laugh. It’s okay.), I wrote last week about the new Wild Oats Natural Marketplace on Dale Mabry in Tampa.

I mentioned in the column that celebrity chef Tyler Florence would be there and I arranged to chat with him before the preview opening started on Tuesday night, so I thought I’d drop by and see the festivities firsthand.

I’ve been to store openings before. Lots of them. This one had a whole different feel to it.

A gigantic line snaked out into the parking lot. One woman said she lined up at 4 p.m. for the 6 p.m. opening. The parking garage and nearby lots in front Home Depot, Total Wine and an abandoned Toys R Us were filled to capacity. Guess I maybe shouldn’t have mentioned that Tyler Florence would be there. The place was a mob scene.

The store is beautiful inside. (I took this shot before doors opened.) If you groove on the natural/organic/vitamin scene, this is your Xanadu. There’s a grill, an espresso and smoothie bar, a bulk food section, meat and seafood and a gigantic cheese section.

The store did its best to accomodate the hoarde, including having staffers at the ready to hand out samples on gigantic platters as shoppers entered. One thing I hadn’t expected to see?

An organic mime.

I saw him before the opening talking on his cell phone. I swear. I did everything I could to get it on film. I was not successful. It will be my life’s main regret.

I asked the woman manning the chocolate dipping fountain how this qualified as healthy. She was at a loss for words. “Dark chocolate is good for you,” I offered. “Yes, that’s it,” she said. Oh, and there were strawberries being used for dipping. That’s the ticket.

But Florence was the main attraction. I interviewed him for about 25 minutes before we emerged from a manager’s office. I half expected him to wait for his entourage to escort him to the book signing table or to his cooking stage for the Spaghetti Putanesca demo he was going to do. Instead, he plunged into the masses, making his way through the store before being corraled by handlers and guided to the signing. At one point, he excused himself as he wedged past a group of women. I watched as two of them waited until he was a safe distance away before they jumped up and down screaming like they’d just seen Bono or something.

A side note: Florence was running late to the opening. Seems that he was doing TV interviews by satellite all afternoon Tuesday and the metal clip that affixed the earpiece wire to his collar to keep it from slipping instead ran down the back of his shirt. “When it yanked down my shirt, it scratched my back,” he said. An assistant noticed that there was a trail of blood down the back of his shirt, so they ran back to his hotel and changed clothes. His girlfriend Evyn Block, here on the left, even brought a second set for him, just in case.