Pulitzer-winning food critic Jonathan Gold, who recently departed the L.A. Weekly to join the Los Angeles Times, writes about his experience attending a nine-course "Marijuana and Chinese Herbs" dinner hosted by serial restauranteur Nguyen Tran and prepared by chef Laurent Quenioux. High Times columnist Elise McDonough, author of the newly-released "The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook" (look for my Boing Boing review soon!) was among those in attendance. Snip from Gold's review:
When Nguyen Tran emailed to tell me about an extravaganza he was setting up at an acquaintance's house, a special herb dinner in which each of the many courses would involve fresh marijuana, I did not necessarily beg to be included in the feast. The first time I met Tran, on a social-media panel somewhere, he happened to be wearing a banana suit, and he has been known to show up to food events dressed as a tauntaun from "The Empire Strikes Back." I like his Starry Kitchen, a pan-Asian lunchroom in a downtown office-building food court, and I admire the running pop-up restaurant he mounts with chef Laurent Quenioux. But the notion of an “herb” dinner wasn't especially my thing. The last time I had sampled this particular herb was many years ago, in the course of reporting a story on Snoop Dogg and his 15 pit bulls, and its culinary uses were not apparent even back then.
(Photo: Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2012: Marijuana leaves are laid out in preparation for one of several courses.)
