There are few people who have a view from their ‘office’ like the one Stacy Johnston and Minette Lotz have on the Naramata Bench outside of Penticton, B.C.
The culinary duo work their magic in the kitchen of The Restaurant at Poplar Grove, which arguably has one of the most coveted vistas in the Okanagan Valley, a sweeping panorama of pastoral vineyards and farmland overlooking Okanagan Lake.
It’s a dream come true for Executive Chef Johnston, who was born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, and grew up part time on her grandparents’ farm before attending culinary school.
“Since the beginning of my career, everyone has been telling me all chefs want to end up in the Okanagan and it’s true.”
But her background instilled in her a love for the land and the people who work it. She wanted to honour that most of all.
“Farmers are the hardest working people I know, then and now. So when I decided to transition into culinary school, farm-to-table concepts were a big passion of mine. What’s sustainable, what is good for the environment, those have always been a huge thing for me.”
With its abundance of accessible, locally grown food and wine, the Okanagan Valley was the ideal fit.
But before she found her way here, Johnston cut her teeth in the restaurant business at several locations in Regina and Vancouver and almost quit the industry – twice.
“I thought I’d clean rooms at one time,” she said. “I was burned out. It takes a toll on your mental health.”
She was a sous chef at the Wascana Country Club in Regina, where she met Lotz, who became her girlfriend and eventually her wife. Lotz, born in South Africa and raised in Regina, made her own way through the culinary world working as a pastry chef, a cheese monger and also running a restaurant kitchen.
It was a job Johnston landed at the Vancouver Aquarium after they moved to the city that ended up changing both their lives and helped form their current culinary duo. Ned Bell was the Aquarium’s executive chef at the time and was working on reopening the renowned Naramata Inn. He asked Johnston and Lotz to join him and they leapt at the chance. Unfortunately, it was March 2020 when they moved and the pandemic had fully settled over the country.
“The first month or two, the kitchen wasn’t even ready,” said Johnston. “But Minette and I just fell in love with the Okanagan. We went foraging, we helped bottle wine on a crush pad. We just got thrown into what Okanagan living could be.”
After the uncertain days of the pandemic passed and they enjoyed a couple successful years at the Inn, the couple once again reached a crossroads.
“Around 2022, I took a bit of a step back and focused on foraging for the restaurant,” said Lotz. “I still was working with our suppliers, but I started a little farmer’s market donut business that took off pretty well.”
Johnston also was considering a change. But then the call came from Michael Ziff, the food and beverage manager at Poplar Grove. The question? Would they take over the kitchen at the winery?
“It was too hard to pass up,” says Johnston. “For the first time, we could dig in and do our own thing, where the menu and the creativity can be ours. We leapt for it.”
Now on their second season, the couple couldn’t be happier. And they hope diners who experience their food will agree.
The Guide to Dining Out in the Okanagan sat down with Johnston and Lotz and asked a series of questions aimed at understanding the thought process and inspiration of this dynamic duo.
Q: What kind of experience can people expect to have when they come here to dine?
SJ: My hope for people when they come to Poplar Grove is to be served a plate of food that has so much thought put behind it. We really try to dig into seasonality, micro-seasonality and how the food intersects with Poplar Grove wine, because that is a huge part of what we do. When people sit down, I want them to have conversations about the food. I want them to be eating the food with the wine and thinking about how well they work together and how cool and interesting the pairings are.
Q: What is one thing costumers can get here, that they can’t get anywhere else?
SJ: One thing that we are really super well known for is our Holler Honey Buns. The honey itself we get from Eric Holler (son of the winery owners and an avid beekeeper), it comes direct from his hives. People love them.
ML: I think something worth adding to the honey buns is that we make a cultured butter where we ferment the cream and whip it in house. It’s a really great dish. And then something else that tends to be fairly unique about our food is that we do try to incorporate wild, foraged ingredients when we can. And we use fermenting and preserving methods in house to bring out interesting flavours that work for us and to save food for later use. If it’s a great year for tomatoes, maybe we’ll preserve some of those and keep them going through the winter. Writing a menu in February is a whole lot easier when you have your pantry stocked from July and August.
Q: What are some examples of wild, foraged foods?
ML: Right now we’re using spruce tips in our tartare. Wild lilies are another. The season is only about two weeks, but I have a spot and as soon as they start, I go out and pick them and we’ll put them on the menu. They’re kind of like a little asparagus. Elderflowers grow all over the bench, wild ramps, mushrooms, if we can find them. And then something this area has in spades is sumac. We have a few spots that are far away from the pollutants. We’ll harvest them and dry them and use them in a couple places on the menu. When the foragables are fresh, we’ll use them fresh, but we also like to preserve them so we have a little something interesting to add to the menu throughout the year.
Q: What do you have on your menu that you’re excited about?
SJ: One of the dishes that I love and every time I make it, I want to eat it, is a goat cheese semifreddo. The goat cheese comes from Happy Days Dairy in Salmon Arm. Right now we’re doing it with local rhubarb grown by Karla at Plot Twist Farms. The sweet, the savoury, the tartness, the nuts that go on it, for me it hits the mark. We are also quite well known for our scallops and other seafood dishes. One thing about us is there is always something new to try. Every experience here can be unique. We will keep a lot of our proteins the same but really change up the garnishes and accompaniments with the season.
Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in this industry in the Okanagan?
SJ: This is a bigger conversation, but one challenge is that you spend six months of your year when things are quite slow and you are able to offer a more intimate experience to diners and then all of a sudden your volume just explodes. That does take a toll on your mental health, it takes a toll on staff working hours. You try really hard to keep things even, to give your staff days off to recharge and come back to us whole. That’s a big thing that we’re trying to do in the kitchen is talk about mental health a bit more and keep that sustainable as well as the food. Because we’re seeing a lot of people leave our industry due to burn out.
Q: How would you describe your food philosophy and how you bring it to life?
SJ: We branded our food philosophy as ‘thoughtful food’. So thinking about what’s in season, first and foremost, what’s coming from the area locally and what’s going to complement it. But also thinking about the sustainability of the products we are using, where they are coming from, how they are getting here, making sure everyone along the supply chain is treated fairly. We think about how we can support our local economy. We chose to buy from local farmers as much as possible and if we are not able to source something from here that we are very careful where we are sourcing it from.
We also think about how our food intersects with the wines from Poplar Grove. Stefan (Arnason), our winemaker, always brings wine in and every time we taste with him, I’m always trying to figure out what dish am I going to want to eat with this, what can I build around this. We’re releasing a Pinot Noir coming up and I’m really excited because it gives us another wine to play with. So I think that’s a giant part of our philosophy as well.
ML: I think a lot of our cooking tends to be fairly French influenced, definitely some Italian influences as well. It’s what we know best I think. We’re both classically trained in French food and we’ve travelled and eaten and picked up some techniques here and there. But I would not call myself an expert in Thai food or Japanese, I just don’t know that food. We make what we know and try to make it really tasty and usually kind of light and lively.
SJ: We like to keep it simple too because we just took our cooks on a garden tour at Puzzlegrass Farm and saw the physical work that comes with creating these beautiful ingredients. I don’t really want to do much to them because they are so great in their original form. And also, guys need to pay attention to how hard these people work because I never want to see these beautiful carrots in the garbage. I use every part of it because the farmers are putting their heart and soul into it.
Q: What role does social media play for the restaurant?
SJ: I’d say it plays a huge role for us, especially in a place that is affected so much by tourism. Now people are food tourists, they see something on social media from far away and now they want to go to that place and try that dish.
ML: I think social media for chefs has been both a blessing and a curse. There are so many techniques that we see chefs doing on social media that before you would never know anyone was even thinking that way and you get a little peek into it and it gets you thinking. So, I think it does spark a lot of creativity. I see more chef content than restaurant content and it always inspires me. Or I see something and I think, wow, I would never do that.
Q: What kind of food trends do you see emerging or fading from the industry?
SJ: One positive trend is the support the industry is giving to their suppliers. They are starting to lift their farmers up, you’ll see them name the farmers who supply the ingredients on the menu.
ML: This maybe has been happening for a few years, but food is trending towards being ingredient focused rather than centred on technique. Presenting beautiful asparagus for what it is, versus making it into an unrecognizable thing. I don’t think people want to eat that way anymore, I know I don’t and I don’t want to cook that way. So hopefully food is moving into just respecting that ingredient and using the best version of it that just doesn’t need a whole lot done to it.
SJ: I would add to that and say what I’m seeing too is moving away from the gastronomy and going back to classic techniques, making food from scratch. The sourdough craze is a great example, watching people figure out how to create a starter and figure out why they love bread so much.
Q: How do you think the culinary industry has changed in the past five years?
ML: Somehow margins have gotten smaller. Everyone talks about it but the cost of ingredients, just like the cost of our groceries have gone up. Obviously, the cost of staffing has gone up. People are more willing to fight for what they deserve and I think that’s a good thing. But it’s a bigger challenge for businesses. We have a responsibility and a bigger task to figure out how we make that work.
SJ: I think also just the openness of talking about mental health. Before COVID, it was few and far between when I would have a cook come to me and say “I’m dealing with anxiety, I’m dealing with depression”. But since, more will talk about their mental health, will talk about what’s going on and how they’re feeling and how they’re struggling. It’s a lot to take on but at the same time, this is where they’re choosing to spend 40 hours of their week. We’re trying to change our practices.
Q: What are some of the things the culinary team takes inspiration from when creating a dish?
SJ: In a traditional kitchen, you can order anything you want from a general food supplier, but for us what really inspires us just comes through the backdoor, what we see on our farmers’ feature sheets. I get excited about the first of the season radish, for example, how are we going to show that off, how to introduce complementary flavours to the radish, how to pair it with our wines, how to serve it. Minette very kindly created a spreadsheet on when things should come into season and when would be a good time to do a menu change based on that.
ML: There’s a process to it. Typically, if we have the beginnings of a dish, a dry-aged duck for example, then we’ll think about that being the meaty, fatty part. Then we’ll make sure we have something that’s a little sour, something acidic, something salty, something sweet. So we do try to build every plate hitting on those key components and then also think about where is the crunch coming from? What is the texture, the mouthfeel going to be like? Do these things work together? And then how do we also make it look really pretty? It’s a fairly easy way to make a menu because we set these parameters.
SJ: That’s the great thing about having the two of us because often I’ll write a draft of a menu and then Minette and I will sit down and the way her brain thinks is so different than mine. And after two hours what was there at the first hour is totally different. It’s a really cool, collaborative experience.
by Julianna Hayes
Photography by Spencer Borgeson
