Starry Kitchen and French chef Laurent Quenioux just paged us to drop a dime on their upcoming cannabis cooking experiment, simply referred to as “the weed dinner” for now. As a guy who knows a guy told us back in January, the dinner is planned as a one-night, 30-seat dinner highlighting Chinese herbs along, with the flavors of cannabis, in typically creative compositions form the partnership like monkfish cheek congee with cannabis pesto and Chinese herb and ganja silky Bantham beggars chicken. Now for the bad news for all you stoners out there…
The duo tells Grub Street, “much to some people’s chagrin, you will PROBABLY not get enough THC to get ‘high’ off the food. We actually do intend to use it as an ingredient,” a statement more than likely confirmed by the fact that these non-toking restaurateurs spell the stuff “cannibis” in an email. But we digress. How do you sign up for the dinner?
Starry Kitchen and chef Quenioux’s final dates of collaboration at the restaurant will be on March 21st. The weed dinner is planned for April 1st (and they promise it’s no joke) and will not be held at the restaurant itself, but at a secret residence that will involve diners being picked up in a random parking lot.
To join, interested parties are being told to sign up for Quenioux’s mailing list to receive an email blast about the meal. There they will be vetted by Nguyen Tran’s forthcoming “personality test” that leads to a random lottery for seats. This complicated series of actions should be enough to weed out the real potheads. If the response is big, the two forces will consider holding a second night of weed and Chinese-herb-based dinners.
The price has not been set in stone, but is projected to be around $150, including the shuttle ride back and forth between the meet-up point. The chef and owners don’t encourage arriving baked out of your gourd and also insist that the use of all paraphernalia is forbidden.
Showing some moxie on Tran’s personality test will apparently go a long way towards helping you land a seat, while a few bribes might even be accepted, he sort of kids. Tran also gives a final warning to those who think this is all about getting blotto on bud: “These Chinese Herbs are in fact MORE lethal (if combined incorrectly) than the “weed!” Yeah, that should really quell the creeping paranoia of the participating diners.
Related: The Stoners at High Times Finally Get Around to Writing a Pot Cookbook [GS]