![](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/An-Explanation-of-Terpenes-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The foods most closely associated with cannabis consumption are best described as \u201cjunk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Monumental over-orders of McDonald\u2019s, movie theater candy, any chip whose name ends in \u201c-itos\u201d or home-baked goods laced with that distinctly \u201cherbal\u201d tang \u2014 this is the cuisine that sits at the traditional intersection of dining and cannabis. Somewhere between decadence and sloppy excess, munchies and edibles are inseparable from cannabis culture, but they\u2019re not exactly fine dining.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet, according to the sibling duo behind the cannabis hospitality company\u00a0Altered Plates<\/a>, high-end cannabis dining experiences are exactly where the food world and the legal cannabis industry need to head together. Hospitality industry vet Rachel Burkons and professional chef Holden Jagger believe there is an eager audience for 420-friendly eating experiences composed of the same elements that make a more conventional fine dining experience special: high-quality ingredients, carefully considered pairings and excellent service.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRight now in the cannabis industry, the most interaction a consumer is going to have with a budtender is going to be 10 minutes,\u201d Burkons says. \u201cBut when you start to shift that to more of a hospitality and restaurant-focused dining experience, it\u2019s going to really require a whole different level of education and hospitality and those things, for us, 100% go hand-in-hand.\u201d<\/p>\n And the gatekeepers of the culinary realm over at the\u00a0James Beard Foundation<\/a>\u00a0seem to agree. Izabela Wojcik is the programming director for the James Beard House, the foundation\u2019s New York City home base. She says that cannabis-focused programming falls perfectly in line with the esteemed non-profit\u2019s motto: \u201cGood food for good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have long looked to the foundation as a resource for food, especially in recent years as new, progressive formats and offerings have hit the scene and the plate,\u201d Wojcik says. \u201cObviously, CBD has become a point of fascination among food conscious consumers and the industry, but a lot of questions remain. We feel like we have a responsibility, now more than ever, to provide education and perspective on the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s where Altered Plates comes in: This spring, Burkons and Jagger hosted a two-part event, a terpene-focused dinner and a CBD-oriented industry panel the following day, both at the Beard House. For chef Jagger, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.<\/p>\n \u201cI would have been happy to wash dishes at the James Beard House,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The dinner itself, held in the Beard House\u2019s famous dining area, consisted of five courses. Carrot tangerine soup, duck carnitas and tempura donuts dusted with terpene-infused sugar, to name a few of the dishes, made for a sumptuous menu just as indulgent as stereotypical munchies \u2014\u00a0 only infinitely more sophisticated, paired with Francis Ford Coppola wine instead of AriZona Ice Tea.\u00a0<\/p>\n And although no\u00a0CBD<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0THC<\/a>\u00a0was consumed at the dinner, Burkons and Jagger made sure cannabis was still present on the table by including a hemp sprout salad and three hemp flower pairings from\u00a0Hudson Hemp<\/a>\u00a0that guests were invited to sniff and savor.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe brought hemp and cannabis to the James Beard House and put it on the same table with wine,\u201d Jagger said. \u201cWe told people to pick it up, examine it, crush it between your fingers and smell it, and create a level of similarity between how they were experiencing the wine pairing and how they were experiencing the cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n The next morning\u2019s Q&A, also hosted in the Beard House, featured an admittedly exhausted Jagger on a speaker panel, alongside Burkons, Plant People cofounder Gabe Kennedy, Cowen cannabis investing expert Vivien Azer, lawyer Meryl Holt Silverman and Well+Good co-founder Melisse Gelula.\u00a0<\/p>\n Each panel member fielded questions from the panel\u2019s moderator and from audience members, including one chef who was curious about how to reliably source cannabis in a grey market and another who wondered about the difference between cannabinoid delivery systems, such as sublingual preparations versus infusions.\u00a0<\/p>\n The only snag in the process? The fact that the original concept for the dinner focused solely on superstar cannabinoid CBD.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Burkons and Jagger first coordinated with the foundation earlier this year, they pitched a CBD-oriented dinner, which would have been the second time that cannabinoid had been served in the Beard House. But then, a recent\u00a0CBD edibles crackdown by New York City officials<\/a>\u00a0sparked a change of plans, and the menu was reoriented with\u00a0terpenes<\/a>\u00a0on parade instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ultimately, this change did not impede the Beard House mission, nor did it stop Jagger from serving up a quality dinner menu.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe terpenes focus proved a better fit anyway, as it allowed [Jagger] and [Burkons] to expand the conversation and to have a more profound teaching experience,\u201d Wojcik says. \u201cAdditionally, it allowed diners to more fully understand the connection between food, cannabis, aromatics and flavor perception.\u201d<\/p>\n For Altered Plates, the warm reception from America\u2019s culinary elite bodes well for the future of culinary cannabis as a movement and an artform.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to have Carl\u2019s Jr. rolling out some burgers,\u201d Burkons says referencing a\u00a0420 PR stunt involving CBD burgers<\/a>, \u201cbut it\u2019s another thing entirely when an organization as respected and as hallowed as the James Beard Foundation says there\u2019s clearly something here and you should start looking at it.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0are you surprised to see culinary institutions warming up to cannabis and hemp?<\/p>\n Originally published in Issue 39 of Cannabis Now.\u00a0LEARN MORE<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The post Elevated Dining at the James Beard House<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The foods most closely associated with cannabis consumption are best described as \u201cjunk.\u201d Monumental over-orders of McDonald\u2019s, movie theater candy, any chip whose name ends in \u201c-itos\u201d or home-baked goods laced with that distinctly \u201cherbal\u201d tang \u2014 this is the cuisine that sits at the traditional intersection of dining andContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":39943,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6297,50,9997,111,6889,12926,85,12901,12927,593],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39944,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39942\/revisions\/39944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/An-Explanation-of-Terpenes.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Pastry-Chefs.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Prepared-Dish.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Creating-Salads-1024x614.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Oil-Vessels.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Rachel-Holden-Awards.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n
\n
\nRead More: Elevated Dining at the James Beard House<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"