Tomatoes, radishes, squash and grapes are starting a revolution in the West—much the way tea did for colonial Americans and Marie Antoinette’s gateau-fabulous invitation did in France. While our revolutionaries do favour mandolines over muskets and wield Wüsthofs not sabres, the exodus of great chefs to B.C.’s Okanagan Valley is nothing short of a culinary coup d’état.

Like Hemingway and Orwell before me, I have been dispatched to cover the front lines. As I make my way up the solid phalanx of chain restaurants on Kelowna’s Harvey Avenue, I see scant signs of casting off the restrictive culinary yoke. But as I head downtown, a brick façade catches my eye: Fresco, the HQ of the resistance...

The Pioneers
The birth of the revolution would have to be the 2001 opening of Fresco. Chef Rod Butters, from the acclaimed Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, brought a grassroots approach by using the Okanagan’s bounty as the basis for his contemporary cuisine. And while simple dishes like local organic greens with artisan chèvre may not seem like the seeds of ferment, it was this just-picked ethos—learned by Butters at the acclaimed Scaramouche in Toronto and practised with chef Bernard Casavant (a recurring character in our revolutionary plot) at the Four Seasons Vancouver and the Fairmont Chateau Whistler—that changed the Valley’s food scene.

From day one, Butters was blown away by the region’s culinary building blocks. “At the Wickaninnish we were literally spending thousands of dollars on courier charges for this produce, which I now watch being grown every day on my drive to work.” He pauses: “It’s a chef’s ultimate playground.”

If Butters started the revolution from the trenches, then Michael Allemeier started one from the mountaintop—the hilltop lair of Mission Hill winery, across the bridge in Westbank. Allemeier also had a stellar resumé when he came to Mission Hill in 2003 (Calgary’s Teatro, the Fairmont Chateau Whistler and Vancouver’s acclaimed Bishop’s). “My whole career, I have loved the joy of pairing food and wines. Cooking at a winery just seemed natural,” he says.
The result of this passion sits right beside the kitchen: Allemeier’s three “white” and three “red” kitchen gardens, where he grows herbs, fruits and vegetables to complement specific varietals. As you sit on the winery’s dining terrace, enjoying roasted duckling breast, croft beets and bing cherry gastrique with a reserve shiraz that was grown on the vines on the hill below, Allemeier deadpans: “You don’t get this in the big city.”

When Allemeier arrived at Mission Hill, only a handful of the region’s wineries served food, let alone offered fine dining. Now all of the top wineries have either opened a high-end restaurant or are making plans to do so, a trend that will only draw more culinary acolytes to the region.

The Ringleader
While chef Bernard Casavant only relocated to Oliver’s Burrowing Owl Vineyard in 2006, his fingerprints are all over this revolution. If Casavant didn’t look so young he could be called the elder statesman: he seems to have employed, mentored or taught every other top chef in the valley.

His career was in full swing at the Four Seasons Vancouver, when, in 1989, Fairmont tapped him to open the restaurant at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler. There, he developed a devotion to using the best local ingredients and using a cadre of young talent (including then sous-chef Butters and Allemeier, who passed through just after Casavant’s departure). By the mid-1990s he had left the Chateau and was running his own café and a wine store, which is where he met Burrowing Owl’s Midge and Jim Wyse.

Casavant and his wife moved to Kelowna with an eye to retiring and in 2007, the Wyses issued a call to arms: Take over the operation of the Sonora Room, a gorgeous, airy restaurant set among undulating vines. Soon locally sourced dishes like warm hazelnut-crusted goat cheese salad with pickled organic beets and gala apple vinaigrette elevated the menu.

Sonora Room’s crew includes young guns who “love two things,” Casavant says: “cooking great food and spending time with their families. We allow them to do both.” A typical day finds pastry chef Rob Cordonier (ex-Fairmont Waterfront Vancouver) scavenging in the vineyard for some grapes for that night’s bread pudding and Chris Van Hooydonk (ex-Four Seasons Boston) awaiting the kitchen-door knock from a farmer bearing just-picked produce.

The Youth Movement
An urban bistro attached to a wine shop selling the best of local vineyards—it’s a place like Waterfront Wines that central Kelowna, a city that often feels more suburban than urban, had been lacking. It’s a small but comfortable room focused on impeccably crafted fare in a relaxed, though tony, setting. It’s a place to grab a quick but innovative dish like steamed sablefish with miso, lime and organic carrot purée.

Chef Mark Filatow opened it in 2004, moving just a few blocks from Fresco, where he had apprenticed. (Previously, Filatow had worked in Vancouver, both at Bishop’s and under Canadian Iron chef Michael Noble at Diva at the Met.) This spring he opened a second place, 764, on Kelowna’s Lakeshore Drive.

“I live close to the water, play with my two young kids, ride my mountain bike and ski on great terrain, and cook with the greatest produce around delivered to me by producers I know personally,” says Filatow. “I’m staying.”
So is chef Brad Lazarenko who, on the day we meet, is scouting downtown Osoyoos for a wine bar he imagines as a great locals’ hangout (where a disproportionate number of locals know what brix means).

In 2006, he was happily running Culina in Edmonton when he was approached by winery giant Vincor (co-owner with the Osoyoos Indian Band of Nk’Mip Cellars) to launch a restaurant in the Spirit Ridge development there. For Lazarenko, schooled under the rather more austere produce offered by Edmonton’s northern climes, the offer was too good to pass up.

Passa Tempo at Spirit Ridge is an eatery that blends the easy casualness of Lazarenko’s collegial Edmonton restaurants (including Soul Soup and the original Passa Tempo) with the joy of a kid let loose in a vegetable-and-fruit candy store. To sit on the outdoor terrace snacking on deep-fried olives and chickpeas with raita, or gorging on roasted Maple Hills chicken with chorizo rice, spirits you to a place of global comfort food.The Idealists
What the decidedly old-school basement kitchen of Penticton’s Joy Road Catering lacks in shiny stainless steel, it makes up in its panoramic lake views. Cameron Smith and Dana Ewart both left top jobs at some of the east’s top restaurants (Jaime Kennedy in Toronto, Montreal’s Toqué!) to come here. Normand Laprise of Toqué!, a pioneer in cuisine de terroir, imbued the pair with a passion for truly local ingred-ients—a passion that brought them to the Okanagan.

Their weekly dinners at God’s Mountain B&B in Penticton, set on a bluff overlooking Skaha Lake, showcase the nearly crazed devotion the pair have to fresh food. As guests arrive, they often encounter Dana picking sour cherries for that night’s dessert. Adds Cam: “The immediacy of the cooking experience here is unparalleled. I go to the farmers’ market that morning and it’s on your plate that evening.”

The Populist
Thanks to starring roles in the Food Network’s Cook Like a Chef and Canadian Learning Television’s It’s Just Food!, Ned Bell is probably the best known of the revolutionaries—and the only one of the group with a local birth certificate (he was born in Penticton) among his foodie credentials (Vancouver’s Lumiere, Toronto’s Senses).

In 2001, it was a shock to the Toronto culinary scene when, at the top of his game, Bell left the “centre of the universe” to move to Calgary. After great success there as a chef-cum-restaurateur who helped open numerous new rooms, Bell again shocked chowhounds last year by moving to Kelowna.

His goals for the new Cabana Bar and Grill in Playa del Sol are anything but modest. At 8,000 square feet, the restaurant and patio dwarf most local places yet still manage to create a casual vibe. (It will have seven big plasma TVs—seven more than all the other establishments combined.) Bell is as happy as anyone about the area’s fruit, fowl and produce, but his goal is to create a concept that can be replicated beyond the valley. Yet he agrees that, with the Okanagan’s influx of winery and real-estate dollars and folks, “There is no more exciting place to cook in North America right now.”

As I leave, the revolution is in full swing. The summer arsenal will soon be at these instigators’ disposal: heirloom tomatoes, purple radishes and the feared Pink Lady apples. I have faced the revolutionaries. I have witnessed their passion for the cause. I can report that they will stop at nothing to win this fight. One thing: someone tell these fierce freedom fighters to wipe the blissful smiles off their faces.

Consult the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association, Penticton & Wine Country Tourism, Tourism Kelowna and Tourism BC. 800-567-2275, totabc.com; 800-663-5052, tourismpenticton.com; 800-663-4345, tourismkelowna.com; 800-435-5622, hellobc.com.
Stay at Kelowna’s vintage Hotel El Dorado (from $255 in summer); choose Summerland Waterfront Resort ($159-429) in the south valley. 500 Cook Rd., 866-608-7500, hoteleldoradokelowna.com; 13011 Lakeshore Dr. S, 877-494-8111, summerlandresorthotel.com.
For dining in Kelowna, Fresco, 1560 Water St., 250-868-8805; Waterfront Wines, 104-1180 Sunset Dr., 250-979-1222; and 764, 764 Lakeshore Dr., 250-764-7645; and soon Cabana Grill, 654 Cook Rd., 250-763-1955; are all must-eat stops on the tour.
Joy Road Catering God’s Mountain Dinners (Thursday, $90; Sunday, $100), held at a dramatic hillside B&B (rooms $129-$199) are sublime. April to Thanksgiving. 4898 Eastside Rd., Penticton, 250-490-4800, godsmountain.com; 250-493-8657, joyroadcatering.com.
Mission Hill Winery has a Tuscan-style outdoor dining terrace (open May 1 through October 12). Buy chef Michael Allemeier’s preserves (we love the Oculus cherries) and wine on site. Daily tours, some with food and wine tastings ($5-$42). 1730 Mission Hill Rd., Westbank, 250-768-6448, missionhillwinery.com.
Passa Tempo Restaurant and Spirit Ridge Resort & Spa let you stay (suites and villas $309-$429), play (golf), wine and dine in Canada’s only desert. Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre is adjacent. 200 Rancher Creek Rd., Osoyoos, 877-313-WINE, spiritridge.ca.
The Sonora Room Restaurant at Burrowing Owl Vineyard is next-door to the winery’s own luxe 10-room guesthouse (rooms from $350) and features rare winery-only vintages. R.R. #1, Site 52, Oliver, 877-498-0620,
bovwine.ca.

Pan-Seared B.C. Spot Prawns with Grilled Sourdough and Chili Garlic Herb Butter
Sautéed Wild Salmon with Goat Cheese-Almond Sauce and Tomato Salsa
Grilled Asparagus Salad with Goat Cheese, Toasted Hazelnuts and Vin Cotto
Ragout of Wild Boar with Soft Blue Cheese Polenta
Mascarpone and Vanilla Bean Mousse

PLUS
Green Vines and Wines Taste the beginnings of an eco-friendly industry at these Okanagan wineries.
Organic, Biodynamic… Plonk? Today green wines are earth-friendly and palate-pleasing

Wild boar Vancouver area: Hills Foods Ltd, #1 - 130 Glacier St., Coquitlam, 604-472-1500, hillsfoods.com. Edmonton area: Hog Wild Specialities, Mayerthorpe, 888-668-9453, hogwild.ab.ca. Calgary area: Second to None Meats, #3 - 2100 4th St. SW, 403-245-6662, second-to-none-meats.ca. Saskatoon area: Specialty Meats Ltd, 827 56th St. East, 306-653-9292, specialtymeats.ca.
Carmelis Lior cheese 250-870-3117, carmelisgoatcheese.com.
Poplar Grove Tiger Blue cheese Victoria area: Ottavio Bakery & Deli, 2272 Oak Bay Ave., 250-592-4080, ottaviovictoria.com. Vancouver area: Les Amis du Fromage, 1752 West 2nd Ave, 604-732-4218; 518 Park Royal South, West Vancouver, 604-925-4218; buycheese.com. Okanagan area: Poplar Grove, 1060 Poplar Grove Rd., Penticton, 250-492-4575, poplargrove.ca.