On a Georgia Island, a Lot of Good Food and Plenty of Nothing

Fishing this way requires walking into the cold surf until the water hits you about midchest.

One person holds a pole attached to a long piece of net fixed with floats at the top and lead weights at the bottom. Someone else stands maybe 150 feet away, holding another pole to which the other end of the net is secured. You jerk up the net at the same time and walk toward the shore, capturing whatever happens to be swimming in front of you.

We pulled in some drum and red fish, tossing back the ones too big to legally keep. A little lemon shark went back into the water, too, along with some horseshoe crabs. Then we headed to the Greyfield, where Ms. Otawka, 36, a former "Top Chef" contestant, was to help her crew get dinner ready.

I first tasted her food when she was putting out regional Mexican dishes at a restaurant in Athens, Ga., owned by the chef Hugh Acheson. When Mr. Acheson pulled the plug on that place, she bounced around a little, sometimes cooking at pop-ups in Atlanta and other food events.

She picked up her first cooking job at a French restaurant in Oakland, Calif., while she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. She also worked at a tattoo shop there, which helps explain all her ink.

Ms. Otawka landed at the Greyfield nearly two years ago, welcomed by Mitty and Mary Ferguson, Jamie's brother and sister-in-law. The couple manage the inn. They wanted to breathe new life into the food, and Ms. Otawka wanted an adventure.

Photo Clams from the day's harvest roast on the open fire at the Greyfield Inn. Credit Hunter McRae for The New York Times

"Chefs live such unbalanced lives," she said. "This is all about balance. You get to live in a beautiful place and cook good food. It was a chance and I took it."

Life here can be isolating. Cellphone service is unreliable, the inn isn't wired for Wi-Fi and a ferry is the only way to and from the island. For company, Ms. Otawka has her husband and her elderly pit bull.

Ben Wheatley, 30, is also a chef at the inn. He and Ms. Otawka fell in love cooking at one of Mr. Acheson's restaurants and married in Mexico late last year. They have dedicated themselves, at least for the moment, to cooking on an island that is right out of a Wes Anderson movie. (He scouted the island as a location for his film "Moonrise Kingdom.")

Greyfield was built in 1900 as a gift to one of Lucy and Thomas Carnegie's daughters. It has been an inn only since the 1960s, when Jam ie's grandmother realized that their slice of the Carnegie fortune was dwindling while taxes and the cost of Greyfield's upkeep grew.

The grandmother, Lucy Ferguson, had long been a fierce champion of the island. She was a collector of animal bones and Indian artifacts, a protector of the wild horses and a cattle rancher who never made much money from the 500 head she tended.

Photo Cherry tomatoes at the inn's garden. Credit Hunter McRae for The New York Times

She taught her children and grandchildren how to use grits and Pond's cold cream to preserve a snakeskin, among other skills. Along with some of the other women from prominent families connected to the island, she helped strike the deal that allowed the family to stay on even after the park service took it over.

Her portrait hangs in the mansion's drawing room, a scarf around her head and a dagger at her side. I slept in her childhood bedroom, a windowpane still bearing her name and the little picture she etched there in 1915.

For years, the inn was the kind of place where people had to dress formally for a dinner that was often prime rib, with crème de menthe over ice cream for dessert. Since Ms. Otawka came, things have changed.

Boxed lunches are still free to any guests who want to pack one along as they explore the island, but instead of fried chicken, the offering might be poached chicken over snap pea salad dressed up with anchovies and Calabrian peppers. Jacques Pepin, who spends winter vacations nearby, visited the island recently, and Ms. Otawka cooked lunch for him. "He said I cooked like his grandmother and mother," she said.

Before dinner, guests order a cocktail and mark their purchases on a pad. On the patio, oysters are roasted over a wood fire and tossed into a metal bucket at the end of a table set with oyster knives and saltines. Guests can shuck all they want, dipping warm nuggets of meat into melted butter.

Photo A soup at the Greyfield Inn. Credit Hunter McRae for The New York Times

At 7:30 on the dot, Christopher Becerra, whom Ms. Otawka talked into moving to the island to expand the wine program and sharpen the front of the house, struck four notes on a set of chimes.

We all headed to the dining room, arranging ourselves around the dining table where the Carnegie family had shared their meals. The guest mix was eclectic. We sat with an archivist for Coca-Cola, some newlyweds who had saved up for a honeymoon night and a retired surgeon in his 80s who was having an improbable romance with a younger novelist. "She's left of Marx and I'm right of Mussolini," the surgeon said, reaching for her hand.

At another table, a family of four were dressed like Connecticut, the two small boys a Ralph Lauren ad in blue blazers and khakis. Earlier in the evening, one of the future captains of industry had offered to shuck oysters for me at a nickel a shell.

By the end of the weekend, we were all camp buddies.

"We have a brilliant spring dinner planned for you," Mr. Becerra said, launching into the wines he had selected from the inn's 90-bottle collection. A pinot blanc, he said, had "this sea breeze quality I just love with the ham."

The pairings that night cost $37, one of the few additional costs beyond the price of the room.

We ate sweet English snap peas and burrata dressed up with pea shoots and Benton's bacon, and fat Georgia shrimp grilled over oak and piled atop cranberry beans moistened with smoky tomato broth spiked with chilies.

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