West Kelowna Rising
Seen from busy Highway 97, West Kelowna is just a place to get through, past the sawmill and the fast food joints and big box stores, on your way north to Lake Country or south to the orchards and wineries and beaches. But venture off the highway and you’ll find yourself in one of British Columbia’s most exciting culinary regions, a place where old and new meet in the glass and on the plate.
If you’ve spent any time at all in the Okanagan Valley, you’ve almost certainly been here before. Chances are you began your wine journey here, at one of the two oldest, best-known wineries in the valley, with restaurants that are just as famous. For nearly two decades, Mission Hill Family Estate and Quails’ Gate have defined the sort of micro-seasonal, hyper-local and wine-friendly cuisine for which the valley has become known. Now they are joined by new wineries and new dining experiences, and the crowds are following.
“The amount of traffic that’s coming, it’s not just July and August any more,” says Patrick Gayler, the executive chef at Mission Hill. “It starts Mothers’ Day weekend. And we’ll stay really busy until the end of September. A whole day can be spent in West Kelowna now just wine touring.”
Suddenly, West Kelowna has once again become one of the most dynamic places to eat, drink and visit in the entire valley. As Gayler says, “We get more people, more places open. More places open, we get more people.”
Focus on the farmer
Winery restaurants seem like such an established part of the valley’s culinary scene, it’s hard to believe how hard it was to open them in the first place. Back in the 1990s, winery owners who wanted to serve guests a meal and a glass of wine had to jump through so many regulatory hoops, most decided it wasn’t worth the bother. The late industry pioneer Harry McWatters finally figured out how to make a winery bistro work, back when he was at Sumac Ridge in Summerland. Not long after that, Anthony von Mandl built his hilltop bell tower at Mission Hill and followed it with a culinary program that would draw visitors to the slopes of Mount Boucherie.
In 2002, Mission Hill opened its seasonal Terrace restaurant and welcomed chef Michael Allemeier, who’d cooked for Bill Clinton and helped make Bishop’s restaurant the talk of Vancouver for the seven years he was there. He promptly planted an herb garden and started connecting with local farmers, setting a pattern for future chefs in the valley, including Gayler.
“People base a lot of their decision-making on how food and wine play into their experiences,” Gayler says. “If we can promote quality ingredients and quality wine and a quality experience, it all goes hand in hand.”
Those experiences include a whole new range of private lunches and tastings out on the Loggia, led by a sommelier and featuring dishes like poached sidestripe shrimp scattered with fresh garden herbs and paired with a lime-zesty reserve Sauvignon Blanc, or tender Jackalope strawberries alongside a financier-style cake made with honey from his own hives, and paired with the reserve rosé.
Just down the road, the Stewart family planted its first vines in the volcanic soils of extinct Mount Boucherie in 1961. In 1989, they opened Quails’ Gate winery on the old Sunnyside Ranch property once owned by John and Susan Allison, the first European settlers on this side of Okanagan Lake. In 2005, they opened Old Vines Restaurant and soon after, winery chef Roger Sleiman arrived from more than a decade of success cooking in Whistler.
“I took over the restaurant and rebuilt everything,” says Sleiman, who is now culinary director for Quails’ Gate and the new winery the Stewarts are opening in East Kelowna. “We try to keep it unpretentious and really Okanagan, but with really good service.” He is legendary for his support of local farmers and producers, as well as refined-rustic dishes that are immaculately paired with Quails’ Gate wines. That could mean a deconstructed “lasagna” of pasta sandwiching fresh peas, asparagus, ricotta and parmesan cream, served with the reserve Chardonnay, or a Cornish game hen fragrant with smoked paprika and paired with the spiced berry notes of Pinot Noir.
With all that history behind them, you’d think these two revered winery restaurants could rest on their laurels. Well, you’d be wrong. As Sleiman says: “It’s always been, ‘I’m not done yet.’”
Accessible glamour
When you veer off Highway 97, you’ll find yourself on Boucherie Road, which swoops through West Kelowna, past vineyards and along the lake, until it becomes Gellatly Road and meanders on to The Cove Lakeside Resort, a handy and gracious place to stay if you plan to do some wine touring. There are at least eight wineries just along Boucherie, more on what’s come to be known as the Westside Wine Trail, and even more in the works.
Among the newest wineries is Frind Estate, which is owned by Markus Frind, the entrepreneur who made his fortune with the dating app Plenty of Fish. It’s housed in the historic Bennett property, once home to W.A.C. Bennett, the former premier of British Columbia, and located right on the beach, where cobalt blue umbrellas flutter in the lake breeze. On a warm, sunny afternoon, guests sip wine and nibble on pretzels, charcuterie and panini at Annie’s Beach Café & Lounge. The vibe is easy-going and friendly, even boisterous, though the wine-making is tackled with rigour by Eric von Krosigk, one of the best-known vintners in the valley.
Among the oldest wineries here is Mt. Boucherie Estate, which has had such a complete makeover the past few years, you might think it was brand new. The Gidda family began operating it as a grape-growing business in 1968, and opened the winery in 2001, with a humble little tasting cottage. In 2016, they sold it to John Chang, Richmond businessman (and founder of Lulu Island Winery.) He’s since built a glamorous new tasting facility that includes The Modest Butcher Kitchen + Market as well as three ultra-luxe guest houses, one of which boasts its own private karaoke room. Somehow, though, the ambience is still relaxed and accessible.
“I don’t want it to be formal, but sit down, chill, stay a while,” says Jesse Harnden, the winery’s general manager. “We’re taking the wines seriously, but not ourselves.”
True to form, the restaurant is a steakhouse that serves a 32-ounce Tomahawk with all the fixings, yet its best-seller is the custom- ground “butcher’s burger.” (Both are well-matched with the winery’s big reds, especially Summit, a Bordeaux-style blend.) The crowd is young and lively, happily ordering from a menu of dad-jokey names, courtesy of executive chef Dan Carkner. “My crowning achievement is the Things on Toast,” he says on a short break from the busy kitchen. Tonight’s Things on Toast is local asparagus, with a colourful array of goat cheese, carrots, pea shoots and mustard caviar. “We’re just taking the pretension out of it.”
The Modest Butcher opened softly last March and was closed by COVID only a few days later. “We pressed pause on everything,” Carkner says. Instead of welcoming guests for ribeyes and strip loins, he focused on stocking the market and offering takeout. It finally opened, officially, on June 4, 2020. “We opened the doors and we were busy right away,” he says. And no wonder: Not only is West Kelowna seeing new wineries and restaurants, it’s also seeing swaths of new development, houses that are being snapped up almost as soon they hit the market by Vancouverites and Calgarians hungry for the Okanagan way of life.
Speakeasies and sommeliers
The Modest Butcher and Annie’s are just the first of a wave of new restaurants opening in West Kelowna.
At Indigenous World Winery, which is owned by Robert Louie, the former chief of the Westbank First Nation, and his wife Bernice, both Okanagan Syilx descendants, the hyper-local Red Fox Club has closed, with a new concept set to launch later this year.
At The Cove Lakeside Resort, a new restaurant is set to open this summer, and will reportedly be managed by the team from Il Mercato Social Kitchen, an already much-loved West Kelowna institution.
But perhaps the most excitement these days is around Crown & Thieves, the deliciously eccentric new winery from Jason Parkes, who is also proprietor and winemaker at the Hatch and Black Swift, consulting winemaker to Indigenous World and others, and lead singer of the grunge-rock band Proper Man in his spare time. Crown & Thieves is designed to look like an antique ruin crumbling atop a hill overlooking Okanagan Lake. It’s stuffed with antiques Parkes collected over the years and pays light-hearted homage to rapscallions of the past, with a gold-framed rogues’ gallery in the tasting room and a speakeasy downstairs.
Next is a rooftop restaurant, Salt & Thieves, that will not only have jaw-dropping views of the lake, but will be operated by the team from Salt & Brick in downtown Kelowna. Chef James Holmes, who has recently appeared on TV shows such as Food Network Canada’s Fire Masters, is revered for his daily fresh sheet and inventive small plates, so this is exciting news indeed for West Kelowna.
Meanwhile, there’s new excitement at Quails’ Gate and Mission Hill, too.
During the pandemic, Sleiman created a market in the small, historic cabin that once housed the Quails’ Gate tasting room. It was an opportunity not just to keep his staff employed, but to support the producers he’s championed so passionately all these years.
“We shut down and literally the next day we started a takeout program and the market,” says Sleiman, who plans to keep the market going post-pandemic. “It was so rewarding, it really was. The market — that’s my little baby right now.”
More and more, Sleiman is looking at ways to step outside the kitchen. In addition to the popular vineyard dinners he’s featured the past few years, he’s planning to start a culinary program at the owner’s lake house at the foot of the vineyard-striped hill. Guests could boat up to the private dock, then enjoy “a really high-end” wine-paired lunch or dinner on the lawn.
The pandemic inspired changes at Mission Hill, too. They sold meal kits and hosted a seasonal holiday lunch in the Chagall Room, with its priceless tapestry. “This year without the COVID restrictions, we’re going to do the same,” Gayler says.
More important, he used the pandemic hiatus to spend time with the wine-makers and hone his pairing skills, which has led to a more tightly edited menu. “When you have so many wine pairings, they always work, but they don’t always highlight the wine the way you like. We’re spending time pairing five or six items instead of 16,” he says. “We can take more time and spend a bit more nuance on the pairings.”
As things have rebounded, he’s seen a shift in the kind of guests who swing through West Kelowna. They are younger and thirsty for education, willing to try new things and ready to spend money on a bespoke experience.
“There’s a huge appetite for people to come in and taste the wines, to learn about the wines methodically and to have a set menu. That’s a real surprise and a departure from what we thought people wanted,” he says. “It makes it such a promising and optimistic future for the whole area.”
