This Tasting Menu Tastes Like Pot

“T would love this to become the first Michelin-starred cannabis restaurant in the world.”

- ADAM PLATT

WHAT DOSAGE would you prefer with your dinner this evening?" asked my host. "We recommend 30 milligrams at most, sir." As he spoke, he bent slightly from the waist in the practiced way I'd seen sommeliers do in grand restaurants around town a million times before. We weren't in a grand restaurant, exactly just a small, tastefully decorated room with half a dozen marble tables. But glasses of Champagne were already being served, and the chef had appeared in his whites to announce the first course of our $365 tasting dinner. Cannabis Fine Dining NYC was the name of this discreet little operation, which-after making a hefty deposit via Zelle and receiving a series of anonymous text-message directions I'd found behind a door at the end of an apartment hallway in Soho. The proprietor, who asked that I keep him anonymous, told me he'd held a series of high-end pop-up dinners during coVID and added a pot-infused option after New York legalized marijuana in 2021. Now it was becoming so popular that he was considering bumping up the price to $420. He wanted me to know that elegant cooking was at the center of the evening's experience. "I would love this to become the first Michelin-starred cannabis restaurant in the world. That's my ambition," he said as I sipped my excellent grand cru and the first course appeared: a spoonful of golden Osetra caviar set on a tear-shaped tart laced with porcini. "Cannabinoid molecules love fat, and caviar is pure fat." The priciest cuts of tuna belly also turn out to be a perfect vehicle for getting high, he said, as does Wagyu beef. Depending on how I felt later on, I could try the chef's special "infused Wagyu Big Mac," made with truffles and layers of foie gras and uni and offered as a supplement for $250.