The Cheese Board Pizza Collective

Starting from downtown Berkeley and wandering north on Shattuck Avenue will after a couple of blocks get yourself into an area colloquially named "The Gourmet Ghetto". This area is filled with restaurants and food-related shops, and home to such classic establishments as Chez Panisse, the first Peet's Coffee, and of course, The Cheese Board Pizza Collective. The Cheese Board Pizza Collective is a cheese shop, bakery, and pizza place cooperatively owned by the employees that specializes in a serving pizza in their own way. Actually, the collective runs two businesses door to door, the first being the cheese shop and bakery (which currently seems to be under reconstruction), and the other the more recently (early nineties) opened pizza place. So what makes the collective famous, apart from being one of the establishments that helped name the area? Well, the collective has a unique philosophy on how to do business. They expand through helping form new collectives rather than opening more shops, are only open a few hours around lunch and dinner a day, have Jazz musicians or a DJ playing in the pizza shop, serve only a single, vegetarian pizza type a day, and often have unique pizzas celebrating occasions from around the world. Today's pizza honored India's independence day, and was topped with curried roasted potatoes, onions, mozzarella and feta cheese, garlic olive oil, key limes, cilantro. Pizzas are available in slices ($2.50) or whole pizzas ($20), and a long line outside the collective, as well as people sitting all around the place eating pizza, are common sights. Do they live up to the hype? Yes, very much so. I threw in a few pictures of yesterday's meals as well, in a vain attempt to fool the casual observer that I do eat a few healthy meals every once in a while as well.