The Sprouting Project - Omni Amelia Island

The term farm-to-table is so commonly used that it can be cliché, but there are some chefs and restaurants truly doing this food movement justice, including the Sprouting Project at Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort. Located along the Florida Georgia boarder, with the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and intracoastal waterways curving around the island to the west, there’s a bounty of fresh seafood and local farms from which to capture inspiration.

Executive Chef Daven Wardynski is the creator of the The Sprouting Project, a monthly outdoor garden dinner with the purpose of inspiring guests to connect with how food is produced and grown. The focus is on food made from scratch with high quality ingredients sourced locally and internationally. But it’s much more than just a dinner, as Chef Wardynski also repurposed the resort’s old floral greenhouse and surrounding vacant land to create a aquaponic greenhouse, organic garden, and an apiary with over 2 million bees producing 5,000 pounds of honey a year.

Each monthly dinner is themed after a single ingredient that is incorporated thoughout the multi-course dinner, including cocktails and dessert. The dinner we attended featured cucumbers as the main ingredient, perfectly cooling for a balmy early autumn evening in Florida.

Check out The Sprouting Project 2018 schedule to find a themed dinner that inspires you, from lemongrass, to blueberry, beets, and the popular winter truffle dinner.