The Texas government is not a fan of marijuana. It’s currently illegal to consume weed both recreationally and for medical reasons in the state. But when it comes to the underground, anything can happen.
That’s what Beth Rankin, a writer for the Dallas Observer, found when she went to a dinner hosted by chef David Anthony Temple (Chef DAT to the locals). Sublime and Bob Marley played softly in the background. The menu featured Sous vide Kobe sashimi with beet puree, salad spritzed with a tincture of Everclear and White Widow, Lobster Pho with green tea noodles and a marijuana resin broth, and a brownie with AK-47 laced caramel sauce.
All of the food together had around 7 milligrams of THC. Colorado measures a single serving (ok, “dose”) as 10 milligrams of THC, and the average joint has between 17 to 21 milligrams of THC. So it wasn’t a crazy amount, but it was enough to make one of the doctors in the room with Rankin make the same Cheetos joke three times.
“It {was} an exceedingly normal, relaxed pop-up dinner,” Rankin writes. “One that just happens to provide an illegal substance that, if he were caught serving it, could send the chef to prison for the rest of his life.”
Everything is bigger in Texas, including marijuana penalties. Less than two ounces of marijuana bud is a misdemeanor that could land someone 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine. Any concentrate — meaning hash oil, weed butter, tinctures, resin, etc. — and it’s a felony no matter what the amount is. And the weight of the food is the weight of marijuana a person will be charged with.
For everyone involved in the underground dinner, it was a pretty chill eating experience that just happened to come with the possibility of life-changing punishments.
