In an ever-growing green movement emerging on the restaurant level, you’ll begin to notice more and more food establishments providing locally grown, organic and/or sustainable items on their menu. But tucked away in the hip L.A. Silverlake neighborhood lays a very uniquely “green” eatery. Aptly named “Forage,” this new restaurant owned and operated by Jason Kim, focuses on providing patrons with specially prepared dishes cooked from produce by local farmers.How local? The process is rather simple yet revolutionary at the same time. Kim wanted to serve delicious dishes that featured locally grown ingredients so he decided to establish a sort of “trade” system with local amateur backyard farmers. He realized many of these private growers end up with an excess of produce so rather than that go to waste, these green-thumbs can simply send Forage their unused vegetables and fruits for credits at his restaurant. As an added bonus for Kim, he gets to create dishes from some very unique foods that would likely be unavailable from traditonal produce purchasing.Photos from our trip to Forage[gallery link="file" orderby="ID"]However, there is a small hump that growers need to bypass before selling their home-grown goods to Kim—they need to pay $63 for inspection from the city to certify their produce is safe. Though in most people’s opinions, it is a rather small price to pay for such a beneficial movement.To read more about Forage, check out this article http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/07/in-la-a-breakthrough-in-local-eating/60507/