Is Chris Van Hooydonk the happiest chef in the Okanagan Valley? People keep telling him that he is, which kind of makes him, well, happy. “I love what I do so much,” he says, before launching into a passionate explanation of how he just wants to “continue the relationship piece and educate consumers about food and agriculture and the people behind it.”

It makes for a refreshing change from all the doom and gloom of 2024, a year that began with a winter cold event that decimated the valley’s grape and stone fruit crops and continued with rising costs, labour shortages, wildfire fears, bureaucratic rule changes and the pandemic’s lingering emotional hangover. It hasn’t been a very happy time in the Okanagan, or indeed, in the hospitality community across Canada.

But at Van Hooydonk’s two-acre Backyard Farm just south of Oliver, things are a little different. “I didn’t want that to be our story,” he says. Rather, he wants people to know that there’s lots of wine, the fires haven’t been an issue “and isn’t it a great time to support people when they need it most?”

He adds: “From a culinary tourism aspect, people are just yearning for that story, they are just yearning for that positivity. This [past season], they were really into it. For us, it was a statement that we are not going anywhere, and if anything, we’re going to keep evolving.”

Now everyone else wants to know just how he’s pulling it off.

Craving connection
The first thing to know about Backyard Farm is that it is not a restaurant; it’s a tiny working farm where one of the farmer-owners is a highly skilled chef who serves dinners for private groups of up to 20 people. Think of it as the kind of agritourism place you’re likely to find in France or Italy, but almost never see in North America.

Van Hooydonk and his wife Mikkel Day-Ponce officially launched Backyard Farm in June 2014, with the dream of offering a relaxed, intimate culinary experience that connects diners with the people who grow their food, the exact opposite of the kind of fast-food, high- volume dining that’s become the norm here.

Previously, Van Hooydonk worked as a restaurant chef at, among other places, the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston and the Sonora Room at Burrowing Owl Estate Winery across the valley. In fact, he could see this property with its two houses and old fruit trees from the winery. So when it came up for sale, how could they resist?

Today, the couple live in one of the houses with their two young daughters and use the other for the business. In addition to the dinners, Van Hooydonk does some catering, preserving, off-site events and teaching, and recently began serving lunches in the new covered patio. (“Diversity is the key to our business and also I don’t sit still very well,” he says with a laugh.) Day-Ponce, meanwhile, lovingly tends the bountiful gardens.

They only offer one dinner each night so guests never feel rushed, and they never share the space with other groups. Each dinner features a single set menu crafted to highlight whatever is fresh and in season. It is always a surprise — all that guests know ahead of time is what grape varieties pair best with each course, so they can venture out and shop for those pairings at the local wineries. His recent partnership with DeVino Wine Tours helps guests discover new wines, and also ensures that they get home safely later on.

When guests arrive, Van Hooydonk typically takes them for a meander through the grounds, to say hello to the chickens, perhaps pluck a ripe plum from a tree and remind everyone just where their food comes from, and who produces it. Then it’s inside to take a seat at the chef’s table and indulge in a multi- course meal that begins with housemade sourdough bread and ends with chef’s own handcrafted chocolate bonbons. In between are refined and complex tastes from farms up and down the valley and around B.C., each dish a perfect little work of art, with layers of texture and flavour and elegant, French- inspired cheffy touches.

If Van Hooydonk has a motto, it’s: “Quality first. Money second.” And, he adds, “If it takes a couple of extra hours to make something, I’m going to do it.”

Beyond the swoops of tangy coulis and whimsical tuile garnishes, the food is designed to “pay tribute to the ingredients without overcomplication,” and to celebrate the farmers in what Van Hooydonk calls the best growing region in Canada. To that end, he loves to come out of the kitchen and chat to guests about what he and his neighbours are growing.

“I talk about that sense of place, and people are yearning for that connection,” he says. “That palpable connection paired with love and passion.”

The first thing to know about the Backyard Farm is that it is not a restaurant; it’s a tiny working farm where one of the farmerowners, Chris Van Hooydonk, above, is a highly skilled chef who serves dinners for private groups of up to 20 people.

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A not-so-small voice
None of this is a typical recipe for success in the culinary world, especially not these days, when costs are so much higher, and customers are spending so much less. Plenty of people are puzzled by the Backyard Farm format, and the past decade has also seen its share of bureaucratic hassles for a business that doesn’t fit neatly into a traditional category.

Once guests discover Backyard Farm, though, they tend to come back again and again, which means that booking ahead — well ahead — is essential. (Saturdays in summer book up a year in advance.) As Van Hooydonk says, “If you’re good at what you do, and you’re honest about what you do, people are going to show. If you do it with honesty and integrity, people will continue to support you.”

And sure, plenty of chefs offer farm-to-table dining and talk passionately about local ingredients and producers. But Van Hooydonk also walks the walk. He doesn’t just rhapsodize about, say, the oyster mushrooms from What the Fungus, the wild asparagus a forager just dropped off or the tender char raised just over on Road 17. He is also a farmer himself. Everything he serves features ingredients grown at Backyard Farm, from the garlic curing in the rafters to the honey in the panna cotta.

The farm, small as it is, boasts some 80 heritage fruit trees and several raised beds of herbs and vegetables, including more than

20 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, as well as the pretty floral borders that are Day-Ponce’s passion, four buzzy beehives and a small flock of chickens that flutter bossily around the place.

Yet before they bought the property, neither of them had any background in farming — he had grown up in Edmonton, she in Vancouver. They learned on the job, with plenty of help from the community around them. That connection to community is what they strive to share with their guests.

More than anything, Van Hooydonk wants to use his “small voice” to emphasize the importance of supporting local agriculture, especially when it comes to food security.

He worries that the convenience of commodity farming has made the cost of food unsustainable. He also worries that so much attention has been paid to 2024’s lost wine vintage and so little to its devastated tree fruits. “We didn’t have any peaches [last] year, we didn’t have any nectarines. We had a mediocre plum year, we had a mediocre cherry year,” he says. “As a chef I want to represent farming as being critical to our survival and affordability.”

He hopes he’s making an impact, and maybe he is.

“People are leaving here and seeking that out now. Clients are saying, ‘We want to know where our food is coming from, and we’re OK with making three different stops.’ Those little things make a big difference,” he says.

Van Hooydonk and his wife Mikkel Day-Ponce launched Backyard Farm in June 2014, with the dream of offering a relaxed, intimate culinary experience that connects diners with the people who grow their food.

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A chef’s dream
It turns out that it’s not just his guests who are yearning to make a difference and to make those connections. So are some of his fellow chefs.

Not long ago, some friends told Van Hooydonk that he’d helped “re-inspire” a well-known chef at a time when he really needed it. He’s moved by this, and also by the number of industry pros who’ve begun reaching out to him for insights and advice.

“There’s a lot more interest in how I’ve been able to make this work. I’ve said to them all that this is not a new concept. It exists everywhere except North America,” he says. “It’s a lifestyle choice. This place that I’ve built is like my culinary lab. I love that, and you can’t fake that.”

He’s also started doing collaborations with other chefs in the valley and loves the synergy of setting aside any differences to cook with likeminded people. He’s already planning collaboration dinners in 2025 with Brock Bowes of Provisions Kitchen, Jeff Van Geest of Miradoro and Mark Filatow of Waterfront Wines, and is hoping to tempt at least one well- known Vancouver chef to the valley.

He firmly believes that there is plenty of opportunity for everyone to be successful; in fact, he’d love to see more establishments like his in the region. “I’m one stop on a five- day trip to the South Okanagan. Where are they going to eat breakfast? Where are they going to eat lunch? Where can I recommend they go wholeheartedly?”

His advice to others: “Shrink it down and have hospitality be at the forefront. You should be offering the highest quality experience you can with the tools you have. People are not willing to spend good money on mediocre food or a mediocre experience. People want an experience. They don’t just want a meal.”

And, he adds, don’t get sidetracked by trends. “Who cares what everyone else is doing? It shouldn’t always be about trying to make everyone happy.”

Having just turned 45, Van Hooydonk is fully in his happy place. Not that he’s sitting still.

Over the last couple of years, he’s built a covered outdoor dining patio, where he serves lunches in summer months. They’re more casual than the dinners, with fewer courses and a slightly different format that allows him to spend more time out of the kitchen and chatting with guests. But the lunches still have “the same emphasis on small producers … and telling that culinary story. It’s very inclusive,” he adds. “It’s a total one- off. People don’t know what to expect. It turned out to be quite a lot of fun.”

This year, he’s planning to do a lot of replanting, hold more events at the farm and maybe build an outdoor kitchen. He’s considering offering bubble brunches on the patio. He wants to hire some more people and work with some new winery partners, to do more chef collabs, teach more students, and to keep representing his valley to the world.

And of course he wants to keep feeding people and sharing his stories of the farmers who grew the food they’re eating.

“There’s nothing as humbling to me that our customers trust me so much, they’ll let me do what I do. Isn’t that a chef’s dream?” he says. “It doesn’t get much better than right now.”

Backyard Farm Chef’s Table
3692 Fruitvale Way, Oliver
backyard-farm.ca | 250-485-2249 | @byfchef