Food, like poetry, invites us to dream. Each time we encounter a familiar ingredient, we find it’s transformed—shaped by the plate it’s on, the hands that prepare it and the diner who receives it.
At Silver King Coastal Kitchen, chef de cuisine Zach Geerson exalts food’s fluid nature, finding endless reverie in every morsel. On a Friday morning, as the orange haze lifts from the Caloosahatchee, he turns a page in his notebook and scrawls the evening’s tasting menu. One course begins in a cobalt-colored urchin crafted by Fort Myers ceramicist Christine Cutting, its form splitting cleanly into a pair of matching bowls. The vessel’s matte black spines cradle the dish atop an eight-seat chef’s counter, a stretch of marble running the length of the open kitchen. The pair reminds Zach of the teacup-sized bowls used for chawanmushi, a Japanese steamed egg custard. Moved, he puts pen to paper and exacts a love letter to Florida: pink shrimp, brown yuzu, Sichuan peppercorn and white soy sauce form the mousse; roasted mushrooms, Fresno chilis and grated ginger stud the velvety emulsion.
The 10th chef in four years to take the helm at Luminary Hotel’s 60-seat fine-dining arena, Zach answers the hotel’s long-time search for someone with deep local roots, artistic vision and an affinity for challenging preconceived notions. A protégé of local legends Harold Balink and the late Shannon Yates, he returned to Fort Myers after refining his technique in New York and Southern California—and brought with him a poetic, globally fluent approach shaped by his experimental pop-up, SYLA. Now, he’s rewriting Silver King’s menu and building a new culinary vocabulary for Fort Myers’ River District—one that rewards curiosity in a market long ruled by familiarity.
A former dancer and street artist, the 34-year-old started developing his place-making food language as a dishwasher at Cru in 2009. Working under Harold and Shannon, he absorbed technique, and perhaps more importantly, he learned how to improvise. Zach obsessed over fundamentals he didn’t yet understand, found mentors willing to let him play and read Alinea like scripture. Pioneering chef Grant Achatz’s avant-garde manifesto redefined restaurants in America and resonated with Zach: dining as a holistic experience with time as a key ingredient. “I saw what food could be, how the fundamentals open out into another world,” he says.
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Photography by Anastasia Walborn
zach geerson chef in action silver king coastal kitchen
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Photography by Anastasia Walborn
zach geerson silver king coastal kitchen plated seafood
Intent on giving structure to his instincts, Zach decamped for New York to study at the Culinary Institute of America before moving to Southern California, where he helped open and run four restaurants, including two of his own.
The Fort Myers native had long been driven to expand the region’s culinary vocabulary. In 2020, with the onset of the pandemic, Zach returned home to start a family and, alongside his baker wife Olivia, launched SYLA (short for See You Later Alligator)—a pop-up that doubled as an immersive study of Gulf Coast cuisine.
They approached the region’s historical foodways like anthropologists, crafting menus that fused classical precision with experimental flair. Native yaupon holly was foraged and fermented with Florida sugar cane to make kombucha; muscat grapes became wine, then vinegar, then gastrique—time itself, again, the chief ingredient. Japanese and Italian influences laced the menu, with Florida’s terroir shaping every global reference point.
Running for a year and a half out of the private dining room at Fort Myers’ Ember, the pop-up stood out for its cerebral, boundary-pushing spirit—more culinary inquiry than dinner service, and unlike anything the city had seen. While SYLA found a niche audience, Fort Myers wasn’t quite ready for a brick-and-mortar turned manifesto. Neither was Zach.
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Photography by Anastasia Walborn
zach geerson silver king coastal kitchen assorted dishes
After years of rotating leadership, Silver King named Zach chef de cuisine in 2024. A Fort Myers native and protégé of the city’s early culinary vanguard, he brings precision, perspective and fresh possibility to the River District.
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Photography by Anastasia Walborn
zach geerson silver king coastal kitchen
The Culinary Institute of America- trained chef’s menu is always in flux. Ideas spawned at daybreak—inspired by a feeling or memory—find their way onto nightly tasting menus.
When Olivia became pregnant, the couple moved to Ohio to be closer to her family before returning in 2022, as the pandemic subsided and restaurants reopened in Florida. After about a year as executive chef at Bar Tulia Mercato, he landed at The Luminary’s flagship restaurant in 2024, drawn to the opportunity to reimagine the waterfront destination.
When Zach took the helm, he also took a chisel to the restaurant’s French-inflected fine dining model, making way for a convergence of creativity and joy, history and culture. He commissioned a chef’s counter and launched a tasting menu rooted in local sourcing and global technique. The tapas-style format invites intimacy and play—diners might swipe bouquets of Florida greens through roasted pepper- almond romesco with their hands or twirl udon cacio e pepe brightened with pistachio and Japanese green peppercorn.
SYLA-like flourishes appear throughout with thoughtful touches like an herbaceous Caribbean-infused salsa verde with culantro, tarragon, thyme and ginger. Dressing everything from red snapper with clementines to steak tartare, the salsa’s flavor can only be described as ‘of the sun.’ Between the core dinner menu, wine pairings and nightly tasting events, Zach hones his vanguardist tendencies to meet the region where it is, while pushing things forward. With the snapper, for example, no part is wasted. Humbler cuts go toward a house-made fish sausage for the ‘seacuterie,’ a play on the classic cheese and meat pairing.
Photography by Anastasia Walborn
zach geerson silver king coastal kitchen plated meal display
Zach collaborated with Fort Myers ceramicist Christine Cutting on marine-inspired dinnerware—a nod to his locally rooted ethos. Pictured here: Crispy red snapper, rösti and confit tomatoes plated atop a sea-glazed vessel.
From their first meeting, the team at Luminary didn’t ask Zach to execute a concept—they invited him to daydream. “It wasn’t a conversation about who and what the restaurant is, but what it could be,” he says.
Silver King needed a point of view. So did Downtown Fort Myers. Over the years, the city’s culinary evolution has stuttered. In the early 2000s, Zach’s future mentors—Harold and Shannon—had carved a corridor of ambitious cooking along the River District. In the 2010s, chefs and diners alike migrated south, away from downtown. “We’re home now,” Zach says. “[We’re] marrying our love of place with a bit of worldly experience.”
As he writes each menu, Zach is dreaming alongside the evolving city—asking, ‘What might live here that we haven’t yet seen?’
The energy is permeating the area. Fort Myers city leaders are considering a designated culinary district along the waterfront. The proposal is up for review later this year. Farther across the region, Zach sees a new wave of talent building momentum. He nods to Kayla Pfeiffer’s playful cooking at Naples’ Bicyclette, the immersive Korean barbecue at Fort Myers’ Ember, and The Bohemian in Bonita Springs. Each positive experience primes the next. “[Diners start to] say, ‘OK, I trust you. I’m in your hands,’” Zach notes. “This is how great food cities are built—one connection leading to another.” The community transitions from seeking the familiar (grouper, steak, predictability) to embracing risk, creativity and the chef’s vision.
As Zach closes his notebook, another thought takes hold: vegetable dashi, made from kitchen discards, long simmered in mirin and sake, poured atop each urchin half, steam escaping in billows, inviting diners into the dream.