My Dinner with Marijuana: chemo, cannabis, and haute cuisine (wonderful article)
I went to a "cannabis dinner" in a loft in downtown Los Angeles on a day of great significance for potheads: 4/20. I first heard about these speakeasy gatherings from an LA Times article by Jonathan Gold. They're hosted by a zany, playful computer science major turned Hollywood film sales rep turned restauranteur, Nguyen Tran. He runs a restaurant called Starry Kitchen with his wife and foodie partner, chef Thi Tran. Together with LA-based French chef Laurent Quenioux, they put on this now-not-so-secret cannabis dinner. There were about 100 people in attendance, plus a few news crews who shot video.
The menu was adventurous. Chinese herbs, with the other herb, were put to imaginative use. Mostly, cannabis appeared in the form of a raw garnish, or infused into accompaniments like a sweet, melt-in-your-mouth coconut oil based "soil" snuggled up next to a creamy panna cotta for dessert. A cannabis-epazote pesto was memorable with monkfish. Pot has a strong flavor and aroma. But it didn't overpower here, either because of the modest quantities used, or because of how the chefs worked with it.
Mr. Tran (above) was in character as alter-ego "Commodore Booty McHooters." He walked around the kitchen before dinner was served, singing songs as "Chef" from South Park. He has been known to dress up as a tauntaun from The Empire Strikes Back, or walk around wearing sandwich boards urging people to eat his balls (crispy fried green tofu balls, and well worth eating).
The organizers weren't too keen on answering questions about the legalities of serving cannabis dinners. Marijuana laws are a tangled, fuzzy mess in Los Angeles anyway; as confused and contradictory as a Cheech and Chong monologue. But the fact that your ticket for the evening bought you a "Lionel Richie Walking Tour (* followed by a totally optional dinner afterwards)" was telling. And funny.
http://boingboing.net/2012/04/23/my-dinner-with-marijuana-chem.html
Photo: Xeni Jardin