They're laying eggs at an Oakland restaurant

latimes.com

The cluck is the draw at Oakland's Pizzaiolo restaurant, where diners can view the coop that will supply eggs for their dishes.

By Maria L. La Ganga

4:23 PM PDT, August 17, 2009

Reporting from Oakland

When the chickens arrived, clucking and pecking, in the rush of Saturday dinner hour -- Witch, Bootsy and five layers to be named later -- they transformed Pizzaiolo restaurant into the latest outpost on food's frontier.

Many urban eateries boast their own kitchen gardens, with mizuna and Mr. Stripey heirloom tomatoes sprouting on rooftops and busy street medians. Some farms even host top-flight dining rooms, where next season's prosciutto snuffles placidly nearby.

But chef-owner Charlie Hallowell is nudging the local-food movement into new territory here in the freeway-adjacent gourmet ghetto of a city where Gallus gallus domesticus

may be legally raised nearly anywhere. Except at restaurants.

That, however, has not stopped Hallowell.

Read the rest of the story here. Photo: LA Times.