Worth the Drive: Farm-to-Table Dining at Sister Restaurants Sunflower Cafe and Sunflower Lodge

On the drive from Vancouver to Maple Ridge, I sat in the passenger seat frantically writing an email on my phone. I was trying to get in touch with co-owner and executive chef Christopher Janowski at the Sunflower Cafe and Sunflower Lodge to explain that my partner and I would be arriving at his farm-to-table restaurant at 11:30 a.m for our meeting—an hour-and-a-half earlier than we agreed. 

We left the city exceedingly early (at my request, of course), anticipating an hour-and-a-half drive. In reality, the drive was actually closer to half that time. (Pro tip, don’t map out future directions during rush hour). But after stopping at a car wash to kill some time, the high noon sun and bright blue skies of the Fraser Valley greeted us as we pulled into the Sunflower Cafe and Yellow House Farm in Maple Ridge, ready for our farm-to-table dining experience. 

Was our visit worth the (surprisingly easy) drive? Absolutely—and here’s why.

Yellow House Farms

You can’t visit the Sunflower Cafe without getting a glimpse of the rows of fresh produce grown at Yellow House Farm. Run by a mighty team of three full-time and two part-time employees, the farm follows regenerative agriculture practices (ie., crop rotation, no-till farming, companion planting, etc.) to grow its wide range of crops, a practice that welcomes natural biodiversity and wildlife, and aims to sustainably produce fresh, delicious and nutritious food. And it also supplies over 200 types of fresh ingredients to the onsite restaurant, Sunflower Cafe, and its sister restaurant in Mission, Sunflower Lodge.

“I was brand new to gardening as of 2020,” says Rayne Beveridge, farm manager, co-owner and general manager of both Sunflower restaurants. “I couldn’t keep a house plant alive,” he jokes. Beveridge (an excellent last name for a co-restaurateur) threw himself into learning how to farm: He watched videos, read books and hired knowledgeable staff. “I soaked up as much information as I possibly could and started experimenting,” he explains. 

Beveridge and his now-business partner Chris Janowski grew up together in Saskatchewan and reconnected when they realized they were both living in B.C. With Chris’s extensive background working in high-end restaurants (like L’Abattoir in Vancouver, for example), he was a natural fit to handle the restaurant and cafe’s food program, while Beveridge managed the farm. They initially opened the Sunflower Cafe in 2021 but had their first full season in 2022. Now, Beveridge and his team do more than just keep the crops alive—they help them thrive.

“We’re trying to provide people with food with the highest level of nutrition,” Beveridge says, “and that means picking it when it’s ready, not when its convenient for global shipping.” Depending on the month (and the crop), there are harvests a few times a week, meaning that the kitchen is preparing meals with ingredients still on the plant or in the ground mere hours earlier. And guests can taste this freshness in the dishes at Sunflower Cafe.

Sunflower Cafe

Don’t be deceived by the name—it is neither a cafe nor is it open for lunch (as I learned showing up at noon). Thankfully, Janowski and Beveridge let us sample some of the restaurant’s dishes ahead of that evening’s dinner service, where guests can order à la carte or opt for a 5-course tasting menu at $85 a person.

Set right on the farm, the Sunflower Cafe has a rustic and authentic feel, but it’s still upscale. There’s no proper building (that’s coming soon, the co-owners say), but the sturdy tent makes this al fresco dining experience a dream in the summer. Janowski built the wooden tables himself, and his team members joined in to build the gazebos. The fully-operational commercial grade kitchen runs out of a converted horse trailer, where the four-person kitchen team prepare elevated, fine dining-esque dishes that are just as beautiful in your mouth as they are on the plate.

There’s a noticeable difference in how a deceivingly simple salad dish tastes when all the ingredients are picked fresh—grown mere metres away from our table. Because of how seasonal the ingredients are, Janowski adapts the menu to both what’s ready to harvest and how of a crop is left. “We might have this beautiful wild spring salmon that we get in and one day we might serve it with fava beans and a certain kind of sauce,” he explains, “and the next day there’s no fava beans left, so we’re serving it with peas.”

Some general menu items are constants—like the glorious summer vegetable salad ($17)—even if the exact ingredients change all the time. “The summer salad is a selection of all the best things on the farm presented fresh on the plate,” says Janowski. My summer salad had fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, kohlrabi and more, in a spring blossom vinaigrette on a bed of ricotta.

The vegetables and fresh produce shine in the dishes (roughly 60 percent are vegetable-forward Janowski notes), but they still serve locally sourced meats, seafood and dairy products from providers like Farmhouse Natural Cheese. Their long term goal is to also have the meat and dairy come from the farm.

Since everything is picked ripe, like the fruit, the restaurant has to use it immediately or find ways to preserve them. “We pick them right when you’d want to eat it in the moment, and two days later they’re not good anymore,” Janowski says. When that happens, they’re working into a jam, a preserve or even a new cocktail ingredient. The strawberries and cream cocktail ($18) may not be made with a preserve, but still incorporates the fresh fruit with strawberry gin, kiwi cheong, milk punch and vanilla yogurt cold foam on top (which I was desperately trying to scoop every last bit of with my straw).

Utilizing the ingredients in these different ways means the restaurant can offer something from the farm year-round—or at least from May until it closes for the season at the end of September.

Though farm-to-table isn’t new, the co-owners say they’ve got something pretty special going. “What we’re doing and the way we’re doing it is pretty unique to the world,” says Beveridge, “having this variety of crops being served in the restaurant.” Janowski also draws on his global experience, having worked in kitchens in Korea and Paris, on what to grow in the garden. “We’re growing a lot of things that maybe you don’t get in a lot of places, like purple kohlrabi and fava beans, many of the flowers, the pine berries, hawthorn berries, chocolate berries,” Janowski says, “you don’t really find them anywhere.”

Sunflower Cafe
10225 272nd Street
Maple Ridge

Sunflower Lodge

Despite seeming like a mission to get there from Vancouver, it’s worth making a day trip out of a visit to the Sunflower Lodge for the whole family (and only 20 minutes from the Sunflower Cafe). Previously the Blackberry Kitchen, Beveridge and Janowski took over the wooden cabin in November 2024 and turned around to open six weeks later that December. The restaurant sits on the sprawling green Fraser River Heritage Park (and even has a concession stand and BBQ around the corner).

Like the Sunflower Cafe, the Sunflower Lodge is also a farm-to-table restaurant, sourcing many of its ingredients from the farm and other local vendors. Unlike the Sunflower Cafe, the Lodge is also open for brunch, lunch and dinner—year-round. “The level of care put into it is still at that level of a fine dining restaurant,” says Janowski, “but it’s served in a little bit more of a casual way, a little bit more affordable.”

Some highlights of what we tried: the grilled halloumi with porcini mushrooms in a stroganoff ($18), a beet salad with chèvre from Agassiz, walnuts and fermented green strawberries ($17; my partner’s favourite) and a baked flan with whipped cream and the sweetest alpine berries ($13). My favourite: the carrot salad ($18), a warm dish featuring carrots from the farm on a cashew cream and carrot top pesto (a lot of carrot is a good thing), with pea shoots and calendula. It was also one of the best things I ate that day: sweet and fresh, and I just love cooked carrots—so I’m biased when it comes to them being prepared well. As for what chef Janowski recommends, he says the loves the omelette from the brunch menu, with fresh herbs, goat cheese from Farmhouse Natural Cheese and eggs sourced from the farm’s neighbour.

Second to the excellent food (at an excellent price too) is the views of Mount Baker, visible from the patio seating on a sunny day. “I used to want to cook to impress everybody,” Janowski says, “and now I want to cook to make everybody happy.”

Sunflower Lodge
7494 Mary Street
Mission