The chicken people are back!

Yes, during this as every January, 20,000-some attendees of the biggest chicken-and-egg conference plan to roost in Atlanta for the week.

As a way of spreading out the welcome mat for this confab — officially the International Poultry Expo/International Feed Expo — the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau has devised something called FeatherFest 2010. About 50 area restaurants are currently serving dishes that use poultry meat or eggs. If you go to one of these participating restaurants, you can vote online through January 28 and rate the dishes.

Dishes range from steak and egg sushi at Geisha House to Rochelle’s egg custard pie at Max Lager’s.

Again, the Web site is here.

This does remind me of a dish I used to enjoy when I lived in Japan called oyako donburi that consisted of eggs and chicken simmered in an onion sauce and served over rice in a lidded bowl. The name literally means “parent and child in a bowl.”