An Okanagan chef is the latest winner of the Food Network culinary competition Chopped Canada. 

Brock Bowes, 36, grew up in B.C. with dreams of becoming a professional snowboarder, but when that didn’t pan out he started cooking. 

Working from Whistler to Oliver, he has competed in several culinary competitions, but Chopped is the main course. 

“It was something I wanted to do. My wife encouraged me to do it, and I watch the show all the time, so I thought yeah, I am going to do it,” said Bowes. 

Filmed last year, when Bowes was working for the Sonora Room at Burrowing Owl, the chef says it has been difficult to sit on the knowledge he won and not be able to tell anyone until the program aired this past Saturday. 

“I was the second to last episode in the season to air, so it was even longer to wait," he said.

In the episode ‘The World is your Lobster,’ Brock faced off against three other competitors to turn a basket filled with mystery ingredients into a three-course meal. For winning, he took home a prize of $10,000. 

“The first course was very challenging, 20 minutes goes by very quickly. My first ingredient out of the basket was a lobster, and to cook a lobster properly is a good 12 minutes, so what I tried to do is chill it down, I tried to rush it as fast as I could,” he says of the first stage of the competition. 

From there, one competitor was knocked out and Bowes moved on to the second course, an heirloom tomato salad with a grilled pot roast; something he often makes at home. 

“But then you had fruit punch concentrate, and that isn’t something I would use unless it’s in a drink, so that was difficult.”

Bowes took home the win with his dessert, which used both tiger ice-cream and black Chinese vinegar. 

The chef now works at Raudz Regional Table and Micro Bar in Kelowna and says he will be donating some of his winnings to the BC SPCA.