Hello Foodie Friends,
As many of you know by now, two of my favorite food personalities are Stanley Tucci and dearly departed Anthony Bourdain. But there were a couple very early inspirations back before I ever really stepped foot in a kitchen, either at home or in a restaurant. My Mom’s ‘Vincent Price Cookbook’ was the initial spark which was fanned by the TV shows featuring Julia Child and one very entertaining Chef….Graham Kerr.
If you tell the story of the evolution of food television, better known as The Galloping Gourmet, he certainly deserves a place alongside pioneers like Julia. In many ways, in fact, he helped create the blueprint for the modern celebrity chef. Born in London in 1934, Kerr trained in hospitality and food service before moving to New Zealand, where he began his television career in the early 1960s. He hosted a program called Entertaining with Kerr, which combined cooking instruction with humor, storytelling, and personality, a remarkably fresh approach for the era. But Kerr became an international sensation with The Galloping Gourmet, a cooking show that aired from 1968 to 1972. Unlike many earlier cooking programs, which were primarily instructional and often quite formal, Kerr transformed cooking into entertainment. His show featured:
- A live studio audience
- Improvised humor and storytelling
- Theatrical presentation
- Wine tasting and discussion
- Lavish, restaurant-style dishes
- An energetic, charismatic host who treated cooking as performance art
- His signature move to start each show was jumping over a chair holding a glass of wine…(a suggestion his wife gave him) He made cooking fun. He would make jokes and inuendo in front of his live audience.
- These elements feel familiar today because so many food personalities adopted them later, but Kerr was among the first to make a chef the star of the show rather than merely the instructor.
He was important because before the Food Network, before Emeril Lagasse, before Bobby Flay and Anthony Bourdain, Graham Kerr showed television producers that audiences would tune in as much for the cook’s personality as for the recipe itself. His combination of expertise, charm, humor, travel, and storytelling helped pave the way for the modern food-media landscape.
Many historians of food television consider him one of the earliest true “celebrity chefs.” At the height of The Galloping Gourmet, the program was distributed internationally, making Kerr one of the most recognizable culinary personalities in the world.
Kerr’s early television persona celebrated rich food, cream, butter, and wine. Later in life, after serious health challenges in his family, he reinvented himself as an advocate for healthier cooking, proving that he could evolve while remaining an influential culinary educator.
One could argue that Graham Kerr wasn’t merely teaching recipes; he was hosting a dinner party through the television screen. Decades before chefs became cultural figures, he invited viewers into a world where food was conversation, laughter, hospitality, and theater. In that sense, he was less a cooking instructor and more a culinary storyteller, a fitting predecessor to the food personalities who would eventually dominate television and digital media.
A memorable line about Kerr might be “Julia Child taught America how to cook; Graham Kerr taught America that cooking could be a show.” He did have one detractor, however. James Beard once called him the ‘Liberace of the Food World’….you listening Guy Fieri?
You’re Welcome…
David & Tino
PS Kerr later became a devout born-again Christian and decided to re-examine his approach to food opting for a healthy approach. To this day, he hosts prayer breakfasts where he lives outside of Seattle.
To see a little more about him click onto this link
