SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — On May 24, American Harvest restaurant hosted a six-course meal featuring local quality grown products recently harvested. Open now for a little over a year, this was not its first themed meal; this dinner that Chefs Jordan and Aurora Coffey created was aptly titled First Harvest.

The food on the menu celebrated the first harvest of spring. With “Peas & Carrots,” “Composed Spring Salad,” “Chilled Asparagus,” “Roulade of Chicken,” “Berkshire Pork” and “Strawberry Rhubarb Jelly Doughnut” peppering the selection the chefs offered a healthy and tasteful meal with the first pickings from local farms.

Lindsay Record, executive director of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, was at the meal and offered a few words of appreciation for a meal supporting local foods with fresh ingredients. “Good ingredients make for consistently good meals,” she proclaimed.

American Harvest’s motto is “True to the Season, True to the Region” and its goal is a simple one: To offer the freshest ingredients sourced from local farmers in Illinois. When a product is not locally available they may need to obtain a product from as close by as possible, but they try to use Illinois farmers first.

The farms profiled at the May 24 meal were Veenstra’s Vegetables & Hecke’s Harvest. This farm supplied the chives, green garlic, baby lettuce, breakfast radishes, lavender, lemon balm and rosemary. Good Earth Farms supplied micro-greens, pea shoots, lettuce and radishes, with Victory Farms offering the oyster mushrooms.

Suttills Garden raised the squash blossoms, asparagus, eggs, kohlrabi, gooseberries and strawberries. Gregory Orchards raised the beets and English peas, M.K. Fruits & Vegetables offered the baby carrots and Bear Creek Ranch supplied organic chickens.

Eden Berkshire Hog Farm provided the naturally raised pork and Katic Breads created the organic artisan focaccia and ciabatta bread. Beer was supplied by Rolling Meadows Brewery. For an additional fee, the food was paired with either a beer or wine that was selected to complement the dish.

Supporting the sustainable movement, American Harvest is teaming up with groups like the Illinois Stewardship Alliance to profile locally grown products that will support the local economy.

American Harvest is owned by Augie and Sharon Mrozowski. Augie began his career in Springfield at the age of 13, and in 1997 opened Augie’s Front Burner located in downtown Springfield. He and his wife “have held virtually every job in the industry from sales representative and line cook, to restaurant owner and caterers and everything in between.”

While the Mrozowskis own American Harvest, they turned the day-to-day operations over to the Coffeys. “I worked for Augie when I was young, as a kid. I started as a dishwasher,” Jordan Coffey said.

Meeting his wife, Aurora, at Augie’s, the two worked for a few years in Chicago, where Coffey said he “learned to be a chef, not a cook.

First Harvest was created by the coordination of a group of chefs and servers that worked together to bring the menu from farm to table. The next scheduled meal will be with a New York theme.

“We do this every month and always on a Thursday,” Coffey said.

To learn more about these great dinners and everyday meals that also promote the freshest ingredients from local farms, check out the restaurant’s website at www.americanharvesteatery.com