Dozens of Bay Area foodies met Sunday night to feast in West Oakland on braised shoulder of local pork, shaved asparagus salad and green garlic soup with homemade yogurt.

Canvas Underground hosted the Feb. 28 event, which featured four courses created by Chef Peter Jackson.

The group is part of the underground dinner party movement which, locally at least, started in 2004 in Jeremy Townsend's Oakland basement as the Ghetto Gourmet.

"Bringing people together is what we're really about," say organizers on Canvas Underground's Web site. "We can’t do it without people who are willing to step outside of what they know and try things at least once."

Diners began the evening in the back yard of Anna and Theo Hartman, both 32, who opened their home to the group for the meal. The couple will soon move to Australia and their home, built in 1879, has been sitting vacant.

"This is the kind of event I'd love to attend anyway," said Anna Hartman. "It's a good use of an empty house, to be able to offer it for the food movement going on in the East Bay."

In the early part of the evening, The Sweet Trade, a "rousing and roguish pair of performers," played ukelele and violin as participants arrived and mingled, sipping wine under blossoming trees in the Hartmans' back yard. Local sustainable jam company Slow Jams provided amuse-bouches topped with lemon curd and honey cinnamon persimmon butter, which they also offered for sale.

As the light faded, the party moved inside to savor local organic fare prepared by Jackson and a slew of volunteers, including Mat Rogers of Agrariana. Among other contributions, Rogers helped collect chanterelle mushrooms in Berkeley and prepared lacto-fermented golden beets to garnish the asparagus salad.

As participants waited for the main course, pork shoulder (cooked for seven hours) with Anson Mills organic grits and chanterelle mushrooms, a dark duo called Vagabondage played a raucous set on accordian and guitar.

Organizer Vera Devera took a moment, as guests enjoyed ginger sponge cake topped with urban foraged citrus gratin and vanilla sabayon, to reflect back on the movement's beginning. Devera said she never intended to help run the group, which "kinda started out as a singles event" in its early days.

But she found herself helping Townsend more and more, she said. When he took his approach international, she stepped in to fill the local void.

Early diners found the listing for "the Ghet" on craigslist, she said. For the first dinner, guests paid $20 to sample four small plates as they sat on crates in Townsend's basement.

"There was no dessert," she said. "We shared a cheese plate."

Attendance on Sunday night supported Agrariana’s Spring 2010 programming including a series of authors’ readings and ‘grandmother’ workshops and a campaign to establish a permanent, annual Bay Area Food and Farming Film Festival.

Canvas Underground recently was filmed by the Fine Living Network, which will air the episode on Apr. 10. The group plans to hold a viewing party. Check its Web site for more information.