Pot pesto, hemp-smoked soft cheese, craft cocktails, pizza with marijuananara sauce, weed flour and even Hashish Fudge. Yes, we take a look at the future of “high dining” and the talented chefs leaving their jobs at esteemed restaurants to produce cutting-edge cannabis concoctions…
The stereotypical stoner: some 30-year-old with a patchy beard, still living with their parents, blankly watching TV in a sea of crumbs and crisps bags and the remnants of last night’s McDonald’s run. Munchies are the ultimate stoner signifier, the punchline of every stoner movie. It makes sense. When you’re high, food is really tasty. And dipping your chips in your McFlurry is an exceptionally good idea as I discovered on my last late-night Macca’s run — trust me, try it. But times are a changing and stereotypes are boring.
With cannabis legalisation continuing to sweep across the world, and the U.S. in particular, we’re seeing the early stages of something really interesting — an emerging cannabis culinary culture. As weed entrepreneurs and luminaries come out of the woodwork and laws around food and cannabis consumption become more lenient, a landscape of social cannabis bars and restaurants is looming on the horizon. Far from the junk food of stoner stereotype’s past, this new era of high dining is actually haute cuisine. Fine dining chefs are leading the charges towards a world where the inextricable link between food and weed is taken seriously.
That link goes as far back as us humans do. Since cannabis debuted in modern taxonomic literature, in 1753, botanists and historians have rigorously debated its origins, evolution and taxonomy. Here’s what we know: originating somewhere in Asia during the early to middle Jurassic period in an arid upland habitat, cannabis was eventually spread across the world by early humans who used it for food, material, medicine, spiritual exploration and a good time.
Many actually believe it was one of the first plants that humans discovered. Carl Sagan, science guru and closeted weed advocate, admitted it would be “wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby to civilisation.” As cave people formed crude communities around freshwater sources dotted with stalks of cannabis, some caveman or cavewoman, one fine day, licked the sticky sap off their fingers and the rest is history, as they say. Some researchers have even gone as far as to theorise that we have cannabis and its creativity-sparking qualities to thank for “the great leap” — the first major period of human advancement when tools, weapons and art began along with collective working and organised religion.
From Africa to Greece to China, ancient cannabis users existed seemingly everywhere. Robyn Griggs Lawrence details the history of eating cannabis in her aptly named book Pot in Pans: A History of Eating Cannabis. Persians created and enjoyed mahjoun, what she refers to as “the origin of edibles”. It was a street food of sugar, sesame and of course the star ingredient cannabis. India, by way of Persia, had a mahjoun of their own. More of a food, it was spicy, sweet, buttery. They also passed around charas, potent hash wafers and bhang, a yogurt drink made with honey and spices. As a consequence of the U.S. forcing global cannabis criminalisation, mahjoun and charas ceased to be sold legally, but bhang survived because of the elites who refused to give it up and advocated on the drink’s behalf. It can still be enjoyed today throughout India.
Other cultures have signature cannabis foods and drinks of their own, but mahjouns hold an important place in the history of edibles as they’re the ancestor of the popular modern edible we know and love: the pot brownie. Gertrude Stein and her life partner, Alice B. Tolkas, were somewhat of a bohemian power couple in what Stein coined as The Lost Generation. They ran a salon in Paris frequented by Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and the like. In 1954, later in life when Stein had passed away, Ms. Tolkas authored a culinary sensation, The Alice B. Tolkas Cookbook. It took off because of one particularly sought-after recipe, a contemporary rendition of the mahjoun titled “Hashish Fudge”. Hollywood took some creative liberties when, in their 1968 film I Love You, Alice B. Tolkas!, they made it a recipe for brownies. It was a hippie cult classic and pot brownies lived on forevermore.
According to the late Anthony Bourdain, “Everybody smokes dope after work. People you would never imagine.” Weed, and let’s be honest drugs at large, have existed within the underbelly of fine dining kitchens for who knows how long. It’s no surprise then that, as cannabis becomes both legalised and normalised, these chefs are at the helm of the food revolution that’s taking off. What’s gone on behind kitchen doors is proudly making its way to tables with style.
In U.S. states like Colorado and Washington where weed is legalised recreationally, talented chefs are leaving their jobs at esteemed restaurants behind for private, high-end cannabis dining productions. Even in states where it’s not legalised, there are some gutsy chefs going publicly underground like the guys at Roberta’s pizza in Brooklyn. For those of you who have yet to experience all that is Roberta’s, I’m happy to say, on record, it’s hands-down the best pizza I’ve ever had. With humble beginnings in a small, shabby concrete building where they served pizza, Roberta’s has expanded to take over virtually the entire block with their restaurant, outdoor bar, parking-lot-esque picnic area, rooftop garden, take-out pizza shop, catering space and 12-seater tasting menu space. In 2012, they hosted an impressive cannabis tasting menu including craft cocktails where GQ writer Jesse Pearson got one of those 12 seats and shared the experience.
Here’s the menu: Cocktails — Planet Caravan (Tincture of gin, Earl Grey leaves, the weed strain Hash Plant, egg whites, lemon juice, grapefruit bitters, simple syrup); The California Painkiller (rum, pineapple puree, orange juice, cream of coconut infused with the strain Northern Lights); The Fish Course (Long Island bluefish smoked with the vaporised fumes of a strain called Sour Diesel, accompanied by weed-yogurt sauce, atop Roberta’s grown greens with marijuana-oil vinaigrette); The Pizza Course (Margherita: marijuananara sauce, buffalo mozzarella, “oregano”; Pot Pesto: ricotta, prosciutto cotto, hemp-seed dough); Dessert (parsley cake made with weed butter, topped with a weed-brittle sheet and green-strawberry rhubarb gelato with weed cream).
Pearson, still high 24 hours after eating, wrote, “I saw weed claimed in the name of great food. I saw, hopefully, the beginning of the end for the pot brownie.”
Cannabis cuisine has certainly begun trickling down into the mainstream. Netflix has two cannabis-based competition cooking shows, Cooking on High and Cooked With Cannabis. As quite the fan of Chopped, I did find the stakes of the competition to be lacking. Cooking on High, which claimed to be the first of its kind, had better hosts and funnier guest judges but a way more boring format with only two chefs and one meal. Cooked With Cannabis was more annoying but cooler on the cooking-front with three chefs making three courses — entrée, main and dessert. Both were educational and most importantly both had legitimately talented chefs who, in my humble opinion, didn’t get the gravitas that they deserved from either show. I’d say Cooked With Cannabis is better only because they do a better job of actually showcasing the cooking and contestants have a “pantry” of weed strains and weed products at their disposal. Cynthia, a grey-haired woman who cursed like a sailor and competed in the first episode put it nicely: “It is amazing to me. We are not even close to understanding the depth of what cannabis is. We haven’t even touched the surface. It’s kind of like being in the wild, wild west.”
The shows really were educational. I learned about the possibilities of using cannabis in the kitchen. I’d made weed butter in a slow cooker before, but that was the extent of my relevant culinary experience. Most commonly, cannabis is infused in fat — oil, butter, even cream. That still seems to be the preferred method by contestants, although now there are things like artisanal cannabis olive oil or other products like cannabis flour. The plant can be used in other ways as well. The leaves can be used. The buds can be zested. I have no doubt the means of incorporating cannabis into cooking will increase exponentially in the next decade.
Where the goal for chefs cooking with cannabis is typically to hide or mask its flavour, Claus Henriksen, head chef at one of Denmark’s finest restaurants, has the opposite approach. He looks to honour the flavour profile of hemp, just because. The dishes he serves at his restaurant aren’t even psychoactive. He has creation such as hemp-smoked soft cheese, stuffed with fresh hemp leaves and served with a puree made from roasted and blended seeds. The sausages on his Christmas menu were stuffed with dried hemp leaves and chopped hazelnuts. Using a local farm, he incorporates hemp into his dishes often, saying, “I haven’t found a dish yet where hemp didn’t work. You often talk about a multipurpose vegetable or herb.
Take something like sage, thyme or rosemary, which people think you can almost use with everything — I actually believe hemp has the ability to accentuate a lot of food. You can sauté it like spinach, fry it, or cook it like creamed kale. I was really impressed that you can use the plant to such a wide extent.” Who knows, maybe hemp will kick kale to the curb and become the next trendiest ingredient.
While the connection between weed and eating is well-established and well-documented, scientists hadn’t quite figured out what exactly went on in the brain until 2014 when a breakthrough scientific paper was published. As the title suggests — the endocannabinoid system controls food intake via olfactory processes — our olfactory bulb, exclusively responsible for smell, is where the secret to our munchies lie. Throughout our brain, we have a natural endocannabinoid system that requires both the endocannabinoids our bodies produce and their endocannabinoid receptors that exist in various regions of our brains. This system plays a vital role in a variety of functions, including sleep, mood, appetite and memory. Cannabis has two active ingredients that interact with our endocannabinoid system: Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the source of its psychoactive properties and Cannabidiol (CBD) which is non-psychoactive. There’s little consensus to what extent, if any, CBD affects appetite although we do know it’s markedly less than THC.
Zooming in on appetite, scientists found that smell plays a surprising role in both the hunger as well as the euphoria experienced while eating high. Essentially, weed artificially replicates the sensation of starvation. It tells our brains and bodies that we’re starving, in turn increasing appetite and, interestingly, heightening our sense of smell and taste. It is the intensification of smell that makes food taste so good high. And as previous research has shown, THC works on another part of our brain called the nucleus accumbens, increasing the release of dopamine and thus the sensation of pleasure.
Smoking weed and ingesting weed produce very different highs. This is due to the ways our bodies process cannabis. When we smoke weed, THC is pretty much immediately absorbed into the bloodstream via our lungs, making its way to the brain where it’s rapidly absorbed. This allows the high to be felt right away and last typically for an hour or two. With edibles, the THC travels through our digestive track, eventually arriving to the liver where it’s metabolised and converted into 11-hydroxy-THC, a compound that’s much stronger and longer-lasting than regular, ol’ THC. The effects of edibles set in anywhere from 45 minutes to three hours after ingesting and usually last four to six hours, sometimes more, depending on dosage. And the high is significantly more intense.
Dosage poses the biggest problem with edibles. Most everyone has a story where they ate some edibles, felt nothing, ate some more and found themselves on their couch four hours later practically tripping and the next day somehow still high. Not only is it difficult to gage dosage when eating edibles, it’s just as tricky when it comes to making edibles. Even for professional companies producing edibles, it’s a real challenge to get the products to precisely match the dosage on their label.
I’ve never been to one of these fancy cannabis dinners and there’s no doubt I would go if the opportunity presented itself. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have concerns over dosing and timing. Every time I eat edibles, they hit me hard — not necessarily in a bad way as far as the high is concerned, but in a there’s-no-way-I’m-leaving-the-house way. The idea of being that high at a dinner table having to socialise with the people next to me… well, I can see it going south is all. And how exactly is that timed? Mid-way through the main, fork on its way to your mouth, that 11-hydroxy-THC from the cocktails and the entrées hits you all at once. I’ll stop, don’t knock it ’til you try it and all that. I suppose you really are in the hands of your chefs and I suppose this is the sort of stuff that the professionals think through for you.
It’s not just cannabis dining that’s cropping up, but restaurants where meals are paired with weed strains to smoke at your table. In Los Angeles, the first of its kind in the States, Lowell Farms opened its doors in 2019. They’ve got waiters that will walk you through both their food menu and weed menu. Here, the weed isn’t in the food at all. It’s smoked, treated like an accoutrement just like alcohol. I have a strong feeling, had coronavirus not knocked out the hospitality industry, more and more would have emerged and will certainly emerge in the years to come. Next, I imagine, will be restaurants where the cannabis is actually in the food.
I went to Amsterdam for the first time a month or so before the whole world went into lockdown. There’s such an interesting feeling sitting inside at a café table with a coffee in one hand and a joint in the other. It felt so foreign and yet so right. Social cannabis could be, and fingers crossed will be, just as casual as getting a beer at the pub. I won’t bore you with the whole weed’s-way-better-for-you- than-alcohol spiel, but it’s true — it is.
Cities like Seattle, trying to merge their coffee and cannabis scenes and looking at Amsterdam to do so, are the foray into a society that accepts social cannabis consumption and that includes dining, either paired with or incorporated within food. Dutch cannabis policy is one of pragmatism. Around the dawn of the 1970s, they decided that tolerating weed would actually protect the populous from harder illicit drugs like heroin. Rather than forcing their citizens to buy their weed on the streets in the black market, they allowed a “tea house” called Mellow Yellow to open their doors in 1972 and sell marijuana through a dealer posing as a customer at the bar. Eventually, their approach of tolerance led to more coffeeshops selling over-the-counter. This went on largely unregulated until the ’90s when basic and practical laws were put in place such as no hard drugs, no sales to under-aged customers and low-profile signage.
As such, Amsterdam has become synonymous with cannabis tourism. To the dismay of backpackers gearing up for a post-COVID world, Amsterdam’s mayor is looking to exclusively allow cannabis sales to nationals, banning tourists from partaking altogether. This is in an effort to reduce tourism and improve the quality of life for the city’s residents. Before lockdown, Amsterdam’s cannabis tourism attracted more than one million visitors each month, myself one of them. That’s more than the city’s entire permanent population. I want what’s best for Amsterdam, sure, but that’s going to leave quite the vacuum in the cannabis tourism industry, one I think Australia and New Zealand would be poised to fill.
Large sectors of the Australian and especially the New Zealand economy are devoted to tourism as is. We already have a thriving and, in my biased opinion, superior hospitality industry. Our food is delicious, our chefs creative. Point being, we’d do it right. And I reckon it would be a win-win for everyone. Taking a look at Australia’s state of legalities, it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing anything like what’s going on in America and elsewhere in the immediate future. Over here in Oceania, it was a bummer New Zealand narrowly voted no on their 2020 cannabis referendum. I think us hopefuls were looking at our more progressive neighbours to do some trailblazing. That said, I think it’s only a matter of time until the scales tip.
Even without recreational cannabis, Australia is expected to rake in upwards of $2 billion dollars a year by 2023, and that’s straight from the Parliamentary Budget Office. In 2017, we legalised the sale of non-psychoactive hemp food products. You may have seen hemp seeds sprinkled on your nearest avocado toast. Hemp is fondly known as a super-duper food packed with a laundry list of nutrients. You can drink it, too. We’ve got Plus Hemp, a “water based beverage developed to enhance hydration and health”, and Young Henry’s making a Hemp IPA, the first but not the last of these hemp beers. And as of this year, CBD which seems to treat most everything under the sun has been approved to be sold over-the-counter.
I know none of this gets you high and that’s no fun, but I see it as a harbinger of a cannabis-friendly future. Investors do, too. The Office of Drug Control has received hundreds of cannabis applications from medical licenses to research licenses. Prohibition Partners, a U.K. think-tank, predicting eventual recreational legalisation, expects the market to be worth $10 billion by 2028. As public sentiment at home and abroad evolves alongside incredibly lucrative market opportunities, it’ll get harder and harder for our country to resist.
Yes, it still feels like a bit of a pipe dream to imagine an Australia that fully embraces cannabis, but indulge me anyway. Let’s take a minute to imagine dispensaries dotting our streets, restaurants experimenting with cannabis-filled menus, pubs serving jozzies on the patio, Coles with a designated aisle of edibles… Might feel far-fetched now, but many do believe this is the future, myself included. ■
By SAL PLUMMER
For the full article grab the May 2021 issue of MAXIM Australia from newsagents and convenience locations. Subscribe here.
