Restaurants in Kelowna

Each table at Memphis Blues Barbeque House is set with bottles of barbecue and hot sauce and an entire roll of paper towels. You’ll need them—southern-style barbecue is messy, and owners George Siu and Park Heffelfinger encourage everyone to eat it the authentic way, with their hands.

Their recipes are authentic, too; the duo carefully studied and reproduced techniques from the World Barbecue Championship. The meat is smoked for several hours over hardwood at low temperatures, resulting in award-winning ribs, pork, and smoky yet tender beef brisket. Today, the restaurant operates out of six locations across British Columbia, and the owners hope to expand.

At all hours, the sound of a whisk against a bowl rings through Cafe Soleil as chefs scramble eggs for an all-day breakfast menu. Omelettes bursting with pepper jack cheeses, grilled chicken, and house-made salsas rest alongside eggs benedict prepared in several different fashions. As the morning sun fades and even roosters that know “Stairway to Heaven” pipe down, guests switch to grilled turkey burgers and pork-rib sandwiches. On the weekends, the café often hosts live bands, which add a lively aural backdrop to the happy chatter of guests.

Rusty's Steakhouse has all the ingredients of the quintessential sports lounge: flat-screen TVs, a menu of hearty steak-house food, beautiful waitresses, and a lager that can only be served in a Stanley Cup. Servers bustle among the intimate booths, cushy armchairs, and 14 pool tables, bearing meat-laden plates along with glasses of specialty cocktails and fine wines. Bright lights and glimmering screens spotlight a variety of special events, such as karaoke nights and Retro Rock Trivia.

Michelle and Jason Troll's vision of Italian-fusion cuisine begins with their menu, which surprises diners with traditional dishes such as macaroni 'n' cheese reinterpreted with premium ingredients that range from Atlantic lobster to wild mushrooms. This fusion of traditional and modern continues into the dining room, where sumptuous red booths and curtains create a textural contrast with exposed-brick accents, ornate chandeliers, and slate floors. The Trolls expanded on that theme by creating a space that flexes seamlessly between upscale dining establishment and local gathering place. Bartenders pour guests a drink, and then encourage them to check out the 75-seat rooftop patio, which affords views of the cityscape and hungry hot air balloon captains who snatch at the eatery's come-hither bowls of fettuccini. The atmosphere livens up all the more on the weekend, when a DJ sates the music-hungry by spinning a live set.

The cooks at City Pizza begin every day by hand-slicing vegetables to layer atop their pizzas’ freshly kneaded dough and in-house made sauce. These vegetables, along with a host of savoury and spicy meats, help to comprise the kitchen’s selection of 22 toppings, which include bacon, artichoke, and crab. In addition to the pizzeria’s established gourmet pies, the cooks can also create custom orders by branding every pepperoni with the diners’ initials. To accompany pizzas, the menu also boasts side salads as well as spicy or tandoori wings.

Chefs man woks in the kitchen of Bluetail Sushi and Bistro to heat up entrees and flash-fry tempura to complement their fresh specialty maki rolls. Albacore tuna and Atlantic salmon nigiri crown bite-sized prisms of white rice, and sashimi platters forgo the grains with slivers of salmon, hamachi, and tuna. Sips of house green tea and imported Japanese sodas pair with Golden Dynasty rolls packed with real crab, real gold flakes, and real keys to Fort Knox or with black california rolls wrapped around crab, avocado, and bluetail black rice.