The superstar chef duo of Quinton Bennett and Julien Lamrani want to take patrons of Row 188 at O’Rourke Family Estate on a culinary journey.
From the vineyards, fields, pastures, hills, forests and waterways that fill their kitchens and dress their tables, Lamrani and Bennett cherish the bounty available to them, which is what drew them to the Okanagan in the first place.
But they are also on a journey of their own. And that is combining this unique sense of place and putting it on a plate. They want visitors to experience the wow factor and leave the table with something uniquely memorable to the Okanagan.
They are off to an incredible start, and this new team is just getting started.
Bennett is the newly appointed culinary director to the estate, overseeing the food programs that encompass O’Rourke Family Estate and its sister winery Peak Cellars. At the time of this interview, he’d been on site for just a week.
Originally from South Africa, the hospitality industry is the only one he’s known. He was basically raised in a culinary boot camp, starting out by washing dishes in a hospital kitchen at age 14 to eventually getting training and moving up the ranks in restaurants in Cape Town, Copenhagen and London. His experience in South East Asia opened his eyes to a fusion approach.
“My foundation of cooking is French and British. That’s my background,” says Bennett. “I’m formally trained in French cuisine. But I love Asian cuisine – the balance of lighter, cleaner flavours. So I’ve found a nice hybrid between the two. They work very well together.”
He spent a great amount of time in London, England, where he met his wife. But they weren’t set on living there long term. They always thought they would make their way to Australia or Canada.
“We applied to both. I came out to Canada when I was in my early 20s. I have family on the West Coast and when I landed I was like ‘whoa, this place is amazing’. There was just something about it. The open, vastness about it. Magical.”
They eventually got their permanent residency in Canada and moved to Vancouver, where Bennett worked at the renowned restaurant Hawksworth.
“But before we decided to settle in a specific place, we wanted to explore the country.”
They travelled to the East Coast and spent several months in the Maritimes before Bennett got an opportunity to open a restaurant in Toronto. He was to run the whole program and create the standard that he said he was more accustomed to. That place was Enigma.
“It’s more the discipline that I’m used to,” says Bennett. “I come from countries where there are third, fourth and fifth generations of a chef, a butcher, a baker, grower or a cheese maker. There’s generational wealth there, there’s more pride in it, more heritage.”
“For example, in Europe you can go get birds, game meats, produce directly from the source – small producers who only sell to one or two restaurants – and put it on your menu. Whereas here, there’s more red tape.”
He also says the palates of the average consumer in the ‘Old World’ tend to be more exotic compared to the ‘New World’ diner. He refers to it as the steak and chicken caesar salad culture.
“Every restaurant has to have it on their menu. That’s all good and fine, but it doesn’t break through and create these culinary destinations here.”
“But the standard is definitely coming up.”
And to that he points to the Michelin Star program. While it has existed as the high bar for the restaurant dining experience around the world since 1900, Canada only made the grade in 2022. And his restaurant Enigma is one of the few that has met the standard and held a Michelin Star under Bennett’s guidance.
One might think this achievement would have been enough, but Bennett wanted more.
“We never wanted to end up in Toronto. We always had our eyes on the West Coast.”
While their children were still young, Bennett and his wife decided the time was ripe to make the move before schools and sports and other activities locked them down. Still, leaving a Michelin-starred restaurant in a major city for the relative obscurity of the Okanagan Valley might have been a risky leap of faith for many. For Bennett, it was not. Each glance at the lake view outside the Row 188 kitchen convinces him of that.
Meanwhile, Executive Chef Julien Lamrani, has his own convictions. A native of France, who grew up cooking in top hotel and restaurant kitchens in Paris, he says he was immediately ‘blown away’ at what the Okanagan Valley had to offer when he moved here 10 years ago. He followed his twin brother, also a chef and married to a Canadian, and established his own identity while working at Quails’ Gate Estate Winery.
Now, he’s excited by the opportunities at O’Rourke Family Estate, where he has been for about a year and a half building the team at Row 188, which opened in October 2025. And both he and Bennett have resources available to them that others in the same position would be exceedingly envious of.
Firstly, is the stunning setting in which they find themselves. The site in Lake Country on the shores of Okanagan Lake is massive and offers up water views stretching as far as the eye can see, north toward Vernon and south toward Kelowna. It will take one’s breath away. On calm days the vast expanse of lake sparkles like diamonds and reflects the surrounding hillsides that hug it. You’d be hard pressed to find another location that matches it, let alone surpasses it.
Secondly, is the fact that O’Rourke Family Estate is a prestigious working winery renowned for setting a high bar for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay production. The slopes leading down to Okanagan Lake are arguably some of the best terroir in British Columbia for growing these two highly revered grapes.
But there’s so much more Lamrani and Bennett have to be excited about. In addition to an abundance of vineyard, the estate is also home to a bounty of other produce – everything from tree fruits, wild berries, white lavender, asparagus, and herbs of all kinds.
There’s also talk of adding livestock in the future, raising poultry for meat and eggs, maybe pigs and other game. The space available doesn’t take that out of the realm of possibility. Plus there are on-site luxurious accommodations; an underground cellar that is a kilometre in length; event halls and an amphitheatre. Additional plans in the works include a second restaurant, currently with the working name of the Granite Café, which will offer more casual, yet elegant cuisine with the same high standards.
“When I came and saw this place, I said to Julien, it’s a behemoth and you look around and say, wow, this thing is crazy,” says Bennett. “But I can see the potential here to build something like a culinary destination. For me, it’s like The French Laundry. This could be an institution of culinary excellence. That’s what we want. We want a one, two Michelin Star fine dining establishment. It would be awesome to have a cookery school. There’s so many multi facets to it and we have the infrastructure to do it.”
“We are at the very beginning of something huge,” adds Lamrani. “Everything that we have done in our careers has led us to a place like this.”
For now, the main focus is to develop an identity for Row 188.
“What do we want it to be? We want it to be Okanagan cuisine and that’s working with the terroir that surrounds us. And then playing with our culinary strengths – French, British and Asian influences, a Pan Pacific kind of vibe. But we won’t put a label on it yet until we figure out what it looks like,” says Bennett.
As culinary director, he also has to contend with the bigger picture which includes the farm-to-table Garden Bistro at Peak Cellars and the future Granite Café.
“We want to get it all working together and build a team for that. It’s already good, we just want to elevate it.”
Currently, Row 188 is open only three nights a week and offers three-course and five-course set price dinners with wine pairing options. A sample menu includes first course options such as a tuna and scallop ceviche, butter poached lobster, onion soup and burrata. The second course may be a chicken ballotine, miso-marinated sablefish, duck breast or Pinot Noir braised beef. For dessert, a lemon tart, croissant bread pudding, seasonal sorbet or salted butter caramel and vanilla crème could be served. The chefs are also playing with ‘amuse-bouche’ options that change weekly, depending on what is in season.
For both, the goal is to provide a memorable fine dining experience that sets a high standard without being pretentious.
“One of the words that comes to mind is ‘honest’ and cooking with your heart – having those values in mind,” Lamrani says. “Trying to impress is the least of my concerns. The best food I’ve ever had in the world is the food cooked by moms. They don’t try to impress. They cook with their heart, they cook to feed. I feel like sometimes we forget where we are from. I love a beautiful technique, I love a beautiful plate, but it’s kind of like the last thing in consideration.”
O’Rourke Family Estate is still very much a work in progress. The winery is open by appointment only and reservations are required at Row 188 for Friday, Saturday and Sunday dinner service.
by Julianna Hayes, Photography by Spencer Borgeson and Develyn Barker
