2026 Patio Opening May 15

Patio season opens at Westcott on May 15, and we are looking forward to seeing you again this year.

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 on the patio 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.

A trip to Mendoza a few years ago, watching cooks tend an open hearth at Francis Mallmann's Siete Fuegos restaurant, gave us the final nudge. You may know Mallmann from the Netflix series Chef's Table. Mallmann was born in Patagonia and trained classically in France — the white tablecloths, the brigade, the sauces — and at the height of that successful career he walked away from it to cook with sticks. He took everything the French kitchen had taught him about precision, restraint and respect for the ingredient, and pointed it at a fire pit. The result isn't rustic for rustic's sake. It's the opposite of fussy on purpose. 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. Every choice considered, but nothing announces itself.

That philosophy is exactly the conversation we wanted to bring home. It pairs naturally with how we already think about our wines.

Which is the other half of what's new. The menu this season leans hard on what is in season, what is local, and increasingly, 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, sometimes week to week. That is the point. We are proudly Feast On Certified.

None of this works without the right person who shares our vision and philosophy. We are very pleased to introduce Lester Hornilla as Westcott's new Chef.

Lester has loved Westcott for a number of years. He and his partner Annie have been frequent guests. He comes to us with nineteen years in professional kitchens and, more recently, as a culinary educator: leading the kitchen at The Chef's Table at Fanshawe College and instructing in the lab at Brescia's School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at Western University. Before that, he was Chef de Cuisine at Loondocks in Muskoka, Sous Chef at the Granite Club in Toronto, and a cook at Buca Osteria & Enoteca, where so many of Toronto's serious cooks have come up. He has trained, mentored and competed alongside the next generation of Canadian chefs.

What sold us on Lester wasn't just the impressive CV. It is the way he talks about food. In our first conversations he described how he likes to make people happy with his food. He talks about creating an environment where 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. That is, almost word for word, what we have been trying to build here in our little slice of Niagara Benchlands for the last fifteen years.

Standing next to him for a small private dinner this spring, watching him taste, watching him correct, watching him talk to a young cook about which coals were ready and which weren't, we knew.

We are equally pleased to introduce Annie, Lester's partner, who is joining the patio team in a front-of-house role. If you visit this summer, there is a good chance Annie will be the one greeting you, walking you to the table, and making sure the afternoon unfolds the way it should. Lester and Annie are moving from London, Ontario to wine country with their two dogs, and we couldn't be happier to have them both as part of the community.

Welcome too, in the same breath, to Josh Morey, back in our kitchen and garden after five years working alongside Ricky and Olivia in Toronto. Josh's familiar presence is part of why this transition has felt so easy. He knows the property, he knows the wines, he knows our regulars. Having him back tying the kitchen to the garden is a quiet gift.

There is a particular kind of afternoon we are trying to create this summer. The sun has lost its edge. The escarpment is doing the slow blue, creamy pink thing it does in late June. There is a fire going at the back of the patio, and something on the grill, and someone has just brought out a plate of whatever the garden is doing this week. The tent is up. Air is clean and clear. A bottle of Brilliant is sweating on the table. Glasses are glittering with the last rays of sunshine. Laughter. Someone's child is searching for frogs in the long grass by the creek. Oysters are up. Pickerel is coming. Nobody is in a hurry. Relax. Breathe deep.

That is what Westcott has always been to us. A gathering place. Familiar faces. New guests, surprised and delighted as they discover the hidden gem and Westcott magic. Lester, Annie and Josh back in the kitchen, these are simply the next chapter in our unfolding story. The wine is still the reason we are here. The patio is still the place. The glorious mid-summer sunsets are waiting in the west over the vineyard. We just have a few more reasons to recommend you stay a while.