I had just finished sipping a drink out of an opaque plastic cup when I decided to begin an active investigation into the Doritos situation from the nearby snack table.
Waves of noticeable relaxation and muscle relief had hit my legs, starting at my calves and moved right up to my core. People were streaming into the room now, mostly guys and a few women, greeting one another with a lot of hugs and handshakes. All love in the room. Just old friends getting together for a dinner party at a local restaurant. Reggae and boom-bap hip hop ensconced the room in a sonic cocoon set to levels acceptable for idle chatter and pleasurable detachment. Our evening’s host called everyone to their seats, set within the private function room of a bustling popular Boston restaurant during active business hours.
The first course was on its way. Sort of an upscale “Snickers” by way of Foie Gras-mousse layered with Viet-caramel, and dusted with crushed peanuts and Thai basil. Ironically, it had the consistency and mouthfeel of a Milky Way. Un-ironically, or even surprisingly, I was already really stoned. My drink, the Snickers, and the roster of dishes to come were all infused with marijuana. Welcome to the underground.
My drink, the Snickers, and the roster of dishes to come were all infused with marijuana. Welcome to the underground.
It’s 4/20 of 2016, seven months before Massachusetts residents voted in overwhelming favor for the legalization of adult-use recreational marijuana in 2017, and long after 63 percent of the state voted in favor of medical use in 2012. As a cannabis cultural date, the origins of 4/20 have long been a topic of controversy, but I decided it was time to sit down at one of the many local cannabis supper clubs and themed dinners I had regularly caught wind of through friends.
Cannabis-themed dinners and meet-ups have been peppering the social scenes in major US cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Boston for several years. As it stands, the governmental oversight, regulations, and new laws are still in limbo in Beacon Hill after the November elections, and legal retail operations won’t be operational until at least 2018 at this point. Dinners like these, while technically illegal, are often spearheaded by factions of pro-cannabis advocates as a means to serve both as introductions to the culinary possibilities of weed, while testing the market for potential new legal-weed business ideas. More than that, these kinds of well-orchestrated clandestine public dinners act as a preview of budding edibles manufacturers and what they’re capable of pulling off.
After a few phone calls to trusted sources, I was led to someone who for our purposes here will be called Percy. [ed note: Legalization may have passed but the hazy regulatory process still abounds, so names have been changed to protect the identity of the organizer and participating restaurant]
Percy looks and acts the part. Smooth talking, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable, he carries himself with a swagger someone as versed in the local hip hop and art scene as he is about cannabis and the mix of science and skill cooking with weed requires.
“To me being able to cook with cannabis at a high level is an art form, and creating consistent products without being overwhelmed or at the point where you’re eating infused food and wouldn’t realize it until someone pointed it out is the goal,” he told me. “I like to provide options for happiness.”
Mike Crawford, a Boston-based syndicated cannabis columnist, radio host, and veteran of the legalization activist community in Massachusetts has been a front-lines witness to the evolution of these kinds of events over the years in the Hub.
“Those types of dinners were the way we did secret fundraising parties for the reform movement early on,” he said in 2016. “And cooking with marijuana isn’t easy, as the taste is so distinctive. So they’re educational for the participants, too. Not just about typical brownies and gummies and the like, but about what can be achieved with main course food options, too. The educational aspect is great for those not familiar with the culture, and reinforces it’s not just about smoking. It’s food, feeling good, medicine, and community.”
Nevertheless, getting into one of these dinners locally is less about simply shelling out the money for an all-inclusive ticket as it is being granted access to the orbit of its organizers to begin with. Personally, I had yet to actually attend a full-fledged organized dosed-dinner party, the kind held under cloak-and-dagger conditions in a professional public setting, no less.
Cooking with marijuana isn’t easy ... it's not just about typical brownies and gummies and the like.
And the ticketed multi-course, upscale junk-food themed dinner I had gained access to was roughly his twelfth, and smaller in scale than normal – about 30 people when his average dinner has double that. The chef who worked in tandem with him to devise the menu and work out the precise dosages for consistency in the night’s dishes was the third he had partnered up with. As a regular daily user, I’m fairly confident in my abilities to maintain some sense of stasis when gearing up for substantial cannabis intake. Nevertheless, on Percy’s orders I had to go through his particular process of introduction a few weeks in advance to make sure.
First came a week or so of emails and text messages between us after being introduced. Partly to feel me out, but also to see if my personality would gel with the underground commune of social circles Percy has amassed, and often finds attending his dinners. Next step was an in-person lunch, where I was lightly grilled on my background, why I was interested, and what I planned to do with the experience from a journalistic perspective. A couple weeks later, I journeyed to Percy’s neck of the Boston woods to essentially hang out for a long night of smoking joints, oils, bongs, eating edibles, and downing a series of pre-made dosed cannabis cocktails that were alcohol free but THC packed.
“I need to be sure ahead of time you won’t be face-down in your plate after the first or second course, which happens with overzealous diners,” he told me. I passed the test. And then slept for 13 hours.
A day or two after my vetting night I got the official invite and entrance to the event on April 20. Previous events have proved the mettle of Percy’s network of chefs and dessert-masters, handling haute-cuisine and highbrow menus of the quail eggs and bone marrow variety. This one however was to be a decidedly fun and cheeky foodie affair.
“This was the first menu where we were all happy with every item on the first test, didn’t have to rework any of it,” he told me at the start of the dinner while I sipped an orange Tang dosed with about 10 eye drops of purified concentrated hash oil. I wound up having more than two.
Hovering over the room was the din of bawdy laughter woven together with communal grunts of approval to the second course after it had arrived. A junk-food inspired, twisted American take on a dim sum classic called a Rodeo Burger Bao stuffed with burger meat and topped with an infused house-made BBQ sauce and crunchy onion rings. One would have probably been satisfying. I ate four. Happily. Maybe because my appetite at that point had been extremely stimulated. Maybe because they were delicious, and made with the care of knowledgeable culinary talent clearly no slouch in the infusion game. I say both.
Percy informed the gathered sophisticates already humming with grinning chatter that the infusions were found in the sauces or butters for each dish. So if one needed to tap out or at least pump the brakes, diners wanting to get the full bang for their $100 bucks could request a non-dosed plate. Not wanting to compromise the experience myself – or skip a course – I opted to just step out for some air and a cigarette.
I materialized back inside the party just as one of the guests, who apparently didn’t heed Percy’s pre-dinner warning not to drink too much (or at all) beforehand, was in a bad way. Whatever wine was savored pre-cocktail hour had now erupted in a booze and infused-food gut storm, causing the comrade to begin to sweat excessively, become disorientated, and then almost collapse while trying to slip out before things got worse. All in the matter of about five minutes. He was the only casualty of the night.
Enter the next course: Tater-tots and caviar, presented on a dosed tomato jam upon crčme fraiche, drizzled with truffle oil and topped with caviar. The texture combination along with the savory/salty mix and the distant cannabis flavor hit all the right notes. A mashup of freezer-foodstuffs from boyhood and the light touches of master thematic plating and flavor profile pairing. Also, it was tater tots, truffles, and caviar. While stoned.
It was tater tots, truffles, and caviar. While stoned.
Things were intensifying but my faculties still remained. I sunk my teeth into the next dish, the Filet O’ Fish sandwich, a delicious direct riff on the disgusting McDonald’s classic. It came slathered in from-scratch infused tartar sauce, melted American cheddar cheese, and was housed between a homemade squid-ink bun. It was even served in a little fold-top box like the eponymous fast food original. My table-mates at this point had taken to Snapchat’s face-swap feature and brayed like donkeys at the results the way a table filled with happy, eating stoners would. Cheery vibes abound.
Finally, the piece de resistance – a “breakfast cereal cheesecake” topped with a strong infused sweet condensed milk sauce drizzled all over the top and sides, dusted with a mishmash of crushed Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Froot Loops. Weed or no weed, this thing was a monster, and by the time I was done my first bite, the orgasm in my mouth was attempting to figure out a way to stuff a few more plates into my jacket to take home with me.
You never know how some of these things will hit you in the moment. It can, and does, go south on you if you’re not good at understanding your own intake levels. This particular session left me less in the inside-a-bubble-objectively-viewing-life mode, and happily social and talkative. Probably annoyingly so towards the end to anyone sitting near me. I went by myself to the dinner, but my table was filled with a few couples who knew each other and whooped it up with infectious glee. One of them invited me to another cannabis party that was happening downtown, right after our little haute-ganja gala ended. Never a dull moment in the Mass. grass scene, especially if you know where to look.
But it was time to retreat home. I wound up in a 20-minute discussion about Donald Trump with my Haitian cab driver, who dropped me off at home right around the time we felt satisfied with our informed exchange of observations and ideas on the marquee political moment of our age. And, right about when my eyelids felt like they had been swapped with wet gym socks filled with stones.
But before I left the dinner, I wanted to know how the crew at my table found out about the event, and how they got invited. Did everyone had to go through what I did, or were brought in by outside parties that had already been vetted? Were they part of the local cannabis community or maybe just euphoria seeking epicureans? Either would make sense, and either would be perfectly fine. I posed the question to my table-neighbor, who grinned and waved his hand as he answered, gesturing to the room.
“Just gotta know the right people, I guess.” Considering it’s a year later and I’m headed to another one north of Boston tonight featuring live hip hop, marquee Boston comedy, locally-born cannabis tech, and choice culinary talent (who has prepared cannabis-infused dinners and meals for Mike Tyson, Carrot Top, and Snoop Dogg) he was absolutely right.
All images via MIPSCare.
