The Philosophy
Cooking with Fire, Eating from the Garden
Some of you have been joining us on the patio for years now. You know the Bedouin tent over the long table. The views across the vineyard. The slow afternoons that turn into early evenings without anyone quite noticing. That is the part of Westcott that has always mattered most to us: the gathering, the conversations, the great wines and great food made from local Niagara ingredients.
This summer the kitchen is continuing to evolve with more focus on the live fire. A wood-fired stone oven is the heart of it, with a hardwood grill alongside. We have always wanted Westcott food to taste like the place, and fire, wood, coals, smoke, is the most honest way we know to do that.
"Cuisine, service and wine not only exist in harmony, but co-mingle to create an exemplary experience, all while respecting the land it comes from and where it is served."
— Lester Hornilla, ChefA trip to Mendoza a few years ago, watching cooks tend an open hearth at Francis Mallmann's Siete Fuegos, gave us the final nudge. Mallmann took everything the French kitchen taught him about precision, restraint and respect for the ingredient, and he pointed it at a fire pit. The result isn't rustic for rustic's sake. Lamb on a cross. Vegetables blackened on a plancha. Bread baked on coals. Cooked plainly, with good fuel, using what's local, letting the ingredient be the loudest thing on the plate.
That philosophy, French rigor, open flame, ingredient-first, is exactly the conversation we wanted to bring home. It pairs naturally with how we already think about our wines. What grows together goes together.
The menu this season leans hard on what is in season, what is local, and what is growing fifty paces from the kitchen door. The chef's garden on the property is producing the herbs, the salad greens, the radishes, the early peas, then the tomatoes that will headline through July and August. What we don't grow ourselves is sourced from the farms we already work with in Niagara and the rest of Ontario. Fish from Lake Huron. Beef and pork from Ontario. Cheese from a half-hour drive in any direction. The menu will change as the garden changes. That is the point. We are proudly Feast-On Certified.
