Taking Kerr of business

Happy birthday Graham Kerr, love your No. 1 Fort Myers fan circa 1996.

It’s hard to pinpoint when I fell in love with Graham Kerr.

I missed him during his 1960s heyday, when he was slugging wine, clarified butter and ladles of cream sauce on The Galloping Gourmet. By the time Chef Kerr found his way to my TV, it was the 90s, and he was doing his healthy “Minimax” thing (minimize fat and cholesterol! maximize flavor!) on PBS’s Graham Kerr's Kitchen, which must have aired in the afternoons when I got home from middle school and high school.

Graham was my study partner. He separated eggs and whisked sauces. I balanced protons with electrons and memorized how Henry VIII’s wives left him (divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived; thanks Mrs. Copeland).

We had cable. I could’ve been watching MTV or Nickelodeon. I could have been listening to B103.9 or Onyx’s Bacdafucup album (my Filipina mom never quite understood those parental-advisory stickers).

But I chose Graham Kerr.

Photo by Calum Lewis on Unsplash

Maybe it was his suspenders. His jaunty ties. His accent. His way with a paring knife. But I chose Graham. Honestly, I can’t remember a single dish he made, I just remember feeling comforted by his actions. His ability to turn vegetables and pantry items into delicious-looking foods mesmerized me. It was a power I’d never known, one my singleworkingmom had, but one she didn’t have the time to teach. You know who had the time? Graham Kerr.

My brother, sister and I lived in what TikTok now calls an “ingredients only” household, meaning we rarely had snacks on hand (and if we did, we devoured them in seconds like a plague of raccoons). But we always had ingredients: flour, bananas, milk, eggs, baking powder. We didn’t have banana muffins, but we could make banana muffins. And Graham could show me how.

Watching Graham Kerr was like watching the potential of my childhood kitchen being realized. He taught me the power of food.

Had my life taken a different turn — had I become a doctor as I planned to for so long, or an engineer or accountant as my mom had hoped — maybe I’d have forgotten about Graham.

Maybe if we didn’t have cable at my UF apartment in Gainesville, I wouldn’t have met Emeril Lagasse or Ming Tsai or Rachael God-I-Worshipped-Her Ray. Maybe they wouldn’t have reminded me of Graham, my teenage crush, and how food is, in so many ways, power. How the ability to transform plants and grains and meats into mouthwatering dishes is a type of magic, one people are willing to pay money to devour.

When I started writing this, I worried Graham Kerr might have left this world by now (so much butter in those early days!). But Wikipedia tells me he’s very much alive and that he celebrated his 89th birthday earlier this week.

Happy birthday Graham Kerr!

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I fell in love with you, but looking back it’s easy to point to you as one of the people who helped me fall in love with food. Thank you. What a gift that’s been.

Restaurant of the week: Flock Wine Bistro

In last week’s poll, when I asked you good readers what I should write about, the consensus answer (to my journalistic shock) was that you want personal essays and stories. … About the legendary and iconic Graham Kerr?!! Here’s hoping!

The other thing you want: restaurant recommendations, which takes us to Flock Wine Bistro.

Flock opened in November in the plaza that used to house Webster’s Grill off of Cypress Lake Drive in south Fort Myers. The bistro offers a lengthy wine list along with some thoughtfully curated, Italian-inspired small plates and sharable platters.

I first visited Flock with the inimitable Robyn Holmes, who took my place as “Jean Le Boeuf” for The News-Press. If you subscribe to the paper (and lol I’m trying to, but our site no longer seems to think I’m real), then you can read Robyn’s review here.

My two cents: Flock excels at simplicity, at beautifully fresh salads and stunning boards of cheese and charcuterie. It’s home to my new favorite happy hour special: a glass of house wine and a personal charcuterie plate for $20 from 3-6 p.m. (who’s free? let’s go). My guanciale-flecked gnocchi were tender and pillowy, as food writers often say gnocchi are. My server was kind and helpful and did not judge the man at the bar who asked if they had Miller Lite (they did not).

You’ll find a more interesting and nuanced wine list across the bridge at Palace Pub & Wine Bar in Cape Coral, but you won’t find pinsa Romana there, or smoked swordfish dip, or adorable jars layered with tiramisu.

It’s about time this part of town had something cool, something tasty, something chic but also fun and easy. Something I’ve already been back to once, and something I look forward to seeing again soon.