Chef Tyler Florence has range. He seems equally at home in a T-shirt and jeans as he mentors teams and relishes bites of road food on The Great Food Truck Race as he does in a fancy chef’s coat behind the line at his luxurious steakhouse, Miller & Lux. If you're lucky enough, you might spot Tyler in his chef’s whites leading the Miller & Lux staff at the original San Francisco location (which opened in 2021) or the Four Seasons Resort Hualālai (which joined the family in 2023).

During his days at his upscale “office,” you might imagine that Tyler is almost exclusively talking to tables about their extensive and top-tier beef program — and tending to steaks on the line, of course. After all, San Francisco Magazine has named Miller & Lux the best steakhouse in the Bay Area for four years running.

But if there’s one dish that “nearly every table choose[s] as part of their menu,” according to Tyler, it’s the shrimp cocktail. “It's hard to argue with something so simple and perfect,” the chef writes in his 2024 cookbook American Grill: 125 Recipes for Mastering Live Fire. Fans of Miller & Lux agree, raving that the appetizer is “super fresh” and “soo yummy.”

At Miller & Lux, the shrimp is poached, and the sauce is spicy; it’s infused with Fresno chiles. In his cookbook, Tyler takes things back to basics with a classic cocktail sauce (ketchup, prepared horseradish, fresh lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt and pepper) paired with shrimp that’s simply grilled in a hot cast-iron pan for two minutes on each side. Top with fresh parsley and chives and serve with grilled lemon halves; all that’s left to do is dive in.

"It’s hard to argue with something so simple and perfect,” Tyler says. “It’s a quick and crowd-pleasing app, and one that even makes sense as a lighter main course.”

This Grilled Shrimp Cocktail and its popular peer on the Miller & Lux menu are far from the first — and are certainly not the only — variations on the theme that Tyler has dreamed up and dialed in. If you’re a fan of this light seafood snack, you might want to try his Shrimp Cocktail "Bullshots" and Frozen Bloody Mary Shrimp Cocktails after giving this grilled one a go.

As for us, as we savor this Grilled Shrimp Cocktail (and dream about visiting Tyler in Hualālai someday), we’re going to continue flipping through American Grill to see how we can make the most of the grilling season. We trust Tyler as our guide implicitly because cooking over live fire is basically his bread and butter.

“I have always joked with people that I grew up with barbecue sauce in my baby bottle,” Tyler explains in the introduction to his 17th cookbook. “To this day, the smell of hickory and mesquite brings me instantly back to my childhood in Greenville, South Carolina, where cooking over charcoal and smoked wood wasn’t just a pastime, but a religion as true as the one that brought us to church on Sundays. I learned the art of good barbecue not just by watching my dad and sampling grilled family recipes at Sunday cookouts, but by tasting and studying the barbecue that defined the Carolinas — one of the four pillars of the great American tradition — up and down my home state.”

These days, Mill Valley, California-based Tyler travels the country not only for his restaurants on The Great Food Truck Race, but also for food festivals like the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival in Miami. In 2026, Tyler hosted the Masters of Fire event to cap off the festival’s 25th year. The aroma of the savory fare over the open flame lured in fans, as did the opportunity to meet the meat master.

“I’ve always felt that there’s almost a spiritual feeling to cooking over a live fire. It’s meat and heat, time and temperature. It has instructions, but it also has room for interpretation. It’s primal, but it’s also precise,” Tyler reflects.

After exploring all of the 124 other options in American Grill, we’re already looking forward to falling into our own Zen-like state as we feast our way through recipes like Grilled Margherita Pizza, Cowboy Beef Chili and Grilled Strawberry Upside-Down Cake. Leave it to Tyler to school us in the ultimates.