Moments before Harold’s opens for dinner, the little customs of service unfurl. Wine glasses are polished and shelved, peppercorns sifted through fingertips and silverware stacked—a culinary orchestra tuning up across the Fort Myers restaurant. Candied shallots, bay leaf and Burgundy perfume the air of the 150-seat dining room, gilded in silver and blue. Chef-owner Harold Balink emerges from the kitchen, a chef’s rag hugging his neck, its feathered blues and greens held in place as if by mere affection. Light falls through the restaurant’s bay windows in large sheets, wrapping itself around the chef’s 6-foot-4-inch frame. The hostess scans the evening’s reservations and opens the door. A party of six enters at once. “Harold!” they chant in unison, arms outstretched, welcoming an embrace. More reservations file through, and within minutes, there’s a full house, each table suddenly aglow, the edges of our lives filling in the shadows.
One of Southwest Florida’s top chefs, Harold is a known man. His culinary innovation has edged and shaped the region’s gastronomic landscape for nearly 40 years, including as co-owner of Fort Myers’ acclaimed decade-defining restaurant Cru. Yet when I drop the nature of this story—a feature in the Best Of issue, driven by an overwhelming number of recommendations from the magazine’s editors and board members—the chef rolls his broad shoulders forward and tugs at the corner of his eye. “I haven’t always been the most humble, but there’s something about getting older,” he says.
Photography by Dan Cutrona
harold balink fort myers culinary scene plated meal
After elevating Gulf dining at the vanguardist, large-scale Cru in Fort Myers, Harold Balink shifted gears—opening Harold’s as an intimate love letter to farm-to-table, globally inspired cuisine.
On a busy night at the height of season, I camp out at a small corner table intent on rooting out the magic of Harold’s—why the restaurant and chef are firmly planted on seemingly everyone’s 'favorites' list. This year marks the 10th anniversary—a milestone for the chef’s most personal and essential culinary iteration. In 2015, he scaled back from more than 200 seats at Cru to 34 at Harold's, a shift spurred by his late wife’s battle with ovarian cancer and the pure culinary impulse to nourish. The intimate space was a closer approximation of the chef and the man, as if Harold had turned the dial a thousand times, tightening a quarter pace with each crank, only to arrive where he started—a small kitchen, a handful of local ingredients, diners-turned-family—and recognize it’s where he belonged all along.
Our server, Heather, delivers the first course. Rock shrimp over cauliflower rice and adzuki beans is Harold’s take on the Southern classic red beans and rice. The ochre-striped tiger tails are a thing of beauty—a native delicacy considered bycatch until a Florida fisherman invented a method to split the tough carapace, introducing the world to the sweet, succulent meat. The terracotta-colored adzuki, an East Asian staple, are smaller and creamier than American red beans. Their coral juices find the cauliflower rice’s milk, turning it violet.
This riff is emblematic of the global palate that has carried Harold throughout his career. More than three decades ago, the then-26-year-old was one of the youngest to helm a local kitchen, serving as executive chef at The King’s Crown at Captiva’s South Seas Island Resort. A consummate student, he’d dog-ear pages of classic culinary reference text Food Lover’s Companion, with Japanese blades and Indian spices stretching the imagination.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
harold balink fort myers culinary scene harold at a table
Then and now, Harold is tender-hearted and wildly open to the world. He grounds his global sensibility in local ingredients—fish caught in our waters and fruits and vegetables pulled from our unique stretch of sand and soil. His evolved American cuisine shifts from one region to the next, a single dish, like red beans and rice, with a thousand iterations. A grilled octopus arepa is redolent of ancho peppers and toasted cumin seeds; a comforting, Hungarian-style stew features smoked paprika and a cleave of braised rabbit; and little tufts of hand-kneaded dough are shaped into dumplings, from Polish pierogi to Italian ravioli, lacing together familial traditions across continents.
The recipes find something that feels familiar, a connection between the flavors we know instinctively and the ones we encounter in cuisines other than our own. “I tell people we are an eclectic American restaurant because America is an eclectic country,” Harold says. “We have everyone from everywhere.”
Harold’s culinary ingenuity has garnered a loyal following since he opened Harold’s on the Bay in 2002 in the Fort Myers River District. Seven years later, he migrated to Bell Tower Shops, partnering with the late institutional chef and restaurateur Shannon Yates on Cru. With more than 200 seats and two chef’s tables, the restaurant was an altogether different animal—a pulsating, boisterous organism and temple to unbridled, inventive cuisine.
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Photography by Dan Cutrona
harold balink fort myers culinary scene plated meal
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Photography by Dan Cutrona
harold balink fort myers culinary scene harold in the kitchen
Shaping local dining culture for nearly four decades, Harold draws devotees to his eclectic American cuisine, with dishes like angel hair with lobster pecorino cream and leek espuma. As the region’s only dual advanced sommelier and chef, he hand-selects each wine to complement the week’s menu.
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
harold balink fort myers culinary scene restaurant decor
Harold sold his stake in Cru in 2015, when his wife, Julie, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. He stepped away to be fully present for her treatment. “I made the conscious decision to be more than I thought I could be,” he says.
Harold, now in a chef coat, a small square of terry cloth clasping his shoulder still, leans into a small two-person table, his broad smile another form of embrace. I would say they are friends or family, but everyone here seems to be. He leaves the table briefly, only to return with a glass of wine.
At the table next to me, a large party debates the wine list. Harold, the area’s only dual advanced sommelier and chef, keeps the list brief and intentional. Each bottle is chosen for its ability to complement a given week’s menu—the perfect bite followed by the perfect sip. Harold swings by and recommends a 2014 Gran Reserva Rioja from Hacienda LÓpez de Haro, situated at the heart of some of the Spanish region’s best terroir. Glasses clink as the table’s hosts welcome their friends to the area. “Tell everyone you’ve been to Harold’s, and they’ll believe you’re a local,” the man laughs.
Heather returns, expertly balancing an array of plates for the table: golden tilefish in a Cognac-peppercorn sauce, togarashi-crusted ahi tuna on a Japanese sweet potato pancake, antelope carpaccio with charred heirlooms from Fort Myers’ organic 12 Seasons Farm, and house-made fettuccine with his Dutch grandmother’s Bolognese. “I learned all of the basics at a butcher block island in her kitchen, always covered in flour, always hungry for more,” Harold says. As I finish my ragu, I glance over my shoulder. Above me hangs a portrait of a boxer just after a clinch and a hang on the ropes. The last blows have been traded. He’s bent forward, gloved hands resting on either knee. Across the bar, Harold picks up his chef’s towel and wipes his brow.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
Photography by Anna Nguyen
Photography by Dan Cutrona
Photography by Anna Nguyen
In 2014, Harold’s wife, Julie, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The conversations that followed felt licked by fire, the urgency of a sudden illness paired with the mind’s inability to fathom it all—as if their lives, like photographs, were yellowing in somebody else’s album.
To be more present throughout her treatment, Harold sold his stake in the wildly popular Cru and opened Harold’s, a narrow, 34-seat dining space with a pocket kitchen. “I made the conscious decision to be more than I thought I could be,” he says. “I didn’t want to keep hold of a juggernaut and be an absentee owner or be an absentee partner [to Julie].” The restaurant had just nine tables, one chef and a two-month waitlist. “I took care of my wife and welcomed folks into my living room Wednesday through Saturday,” Harold recalls, pulling his hands to his chest. He cooked alone, night after night, focused on what nourishes and what gathers.
When Julie passed in 2017, Harold, the man and the restaurant, stopped. Former News-Press food critic Annabelle Tometich met with Harold in the months that followed, penning a stunning portrait of a man in flux. The night before the story’s publication, Harold drove to Captiva, where he and Julie first met. He slept on the sand, its grains shifting beneath him. The next morning, he stopped at a small cafe for a cup of coffee, passing an older woman at a sidewalk newsstand. “This is you,” she exclaimed, holding the bundle of newsprint. “I dropped to my knees right there and cried. We talked over coffee, and I cried some more,” he says. The conversation with Annabelle, followed by the curbside catharsis, set loose the heartstrings. “It was an accounting of Julie and me that I didn’t know I needed,” Harold says, acknowledging he had considered leaving the restaurant industry altogether.
Harold leaned in, first to grief and then to service. For decades, he and Julie had donated their time to local nonprofits, with Harold serving as chef of honor at countless charity auctions and dinners for The Heights Foundation, Pace Center for Girls, Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida's cancer fund and Southwest Florida Wine & Food Fest, among others. As he processed Julie’s passing, Harold deepened his devotion to giving back. “I’m not a chef or restaurateur. I’m a servant,” he says. “I was a servant to my wife and my kids. I’m a servant to this town, my staff and my guests. It’s what I’m meant to do, in whatever form—the charities, this restaurant, cooking, uncorking a wine, a hug. I serve.” Harold’s words float through the air like particles suspended. His life reduces to this—an empathy so thick it draws light into itself. It sizzles and hums.
At the stainless-steel bar (part of a 2021 expansion of the restaurant that added 100 seats and expanded the kitchen staff, alleviating the two-month waitlist and allowing Harold to be more present with diners), pastry chef Scott Kreitzer plates a chocolate cremosa. The decadent dessert is denser than mousse, made with a base of crème anglaise and bittersweet cacao. As I dip my spoon into the silken surface, I roll Harold’s story in mind. If there is one secret to this life, it is that each experience informs who we are and the things we create. At Harold’s, a life laced with love and loss shapes each dish and the embrace that comes after. Diners taste the world—our little corner of Florida flung wide open to reveal cultures and flavors converging—as Harold and his staff welcome us into their home night after night. Just then, another familiar face enters the restaurant. Harold raises his arms in welcome. “My friends,” he bellows. “You’re back.”