Every summer we tell ourselves we’re going to get out of the city more. Get in the car. Roll down the windows. Drive until the buildings disappear and there’s nothing but fields out the window.

Honestly, the drive is almost enough.

But throw in a table full of good people and a great meal waiting at the end of it? Even better. The only problem is that somebody has to grow the food, cook the dinner, set the table, pour the wine and figure out where the hell everyone is going to park.

Most of us are not going to do that.

Niwa, thankfully, has been gaming out a plan.

The relationship between Niwa and Hazelmere Farm goes back to Ugly Dumpling, the team’s previous restaurant, and carried through when they opened Niwa in December of 2024. As co-owner Miki Ellis puts it, “We’ve visited the farm, picked plums and cherries, and hung out under the trees. It’s a magical property.” Spend enough time hanging out under cherry trees and, eventually, somebody is going to suggest cooking dinner.

On July 25, they finally will.

Chef Darren Gee will build a family-style menu around whatever is coming out of the fields that day, with sake and wine pairings and a short list of bottles and cocktails. All you need to do is find the designated driver.

Some Context

If you’ve never been to Niwa, a farm dinner feels like a pretty good introduction. Though the setting will be stunning, this isn’t a dinner where the farm is just a backdrop. For Gee, the farm is where the cooking starts because it’s where the ingredients are. Full stop.

That respect for ingredients shows up directly in how he cooks: subtle, humble, simple (never about him or playing to any ‘scene’). In fact, most of the time I see Gee’s cooking as more of a conversation between himself and the ingredients than one between himself and the diner. He’s definitely never struck me as someone interested in cooking for fashion, applause, or to prove how clever he is. He’s not even trying to show you that he isn’t doing those things in order to have you notice. He could not give two fucks about any of it. His attention is elsewhere: on the ingredients in front of him and where they came from. If restaurants could operate in the middle of a field, I’d have a hard time imagining Gee objecting. Logistics on that are tricky, so this is the next best thing.

That’s what makes dinner at Hazelmere such a cool opportunity: a chance to see Gee’s cooking at its starting point. For one night, the distance between the grower, the ingredient, the kitchen, and the plate is about as direct as it gets. Eating his food on the farm feels like a shortcut to understanding what you’re getting at Niwa.

Hazelmere itself gives you another reason to make the drive. Hazelmere farmer Naty King has spent more than three decades growing organic produce on the South Surrey farm, supplying many of Vancouver’s best restaurants and helping shape the Lower Mainland’s farm-to-table movement long before the phrase became fashionable.

This is a working farm. Food is grown, picked, packed and sold here. Crops fail. Equipment breaks. Weather changes plans. Things are ready when they’re ready, not when a chef wants them to be. A good farm dinner doesn’t try to clean all that up and make it pretty. The tables and glasses will come out, but the farm doesn’t stop being a farm just because people have paid to eat there. We like that. Sure, something might go sideways. Good. Roll with it. The whole point of eating dinner on a farm is letting the farm have some say in how the night goes.

Hazelmere Organic Farm

1859 184 St., Surrey, BC