What’s it like to sit down right down to a $295-per-person, 10-course, fine-dining, weed-infused dinner? We didn’t know both. That’s how we discovered ourselves on a overdue spring Tuesday evening, tucking our ft beneath the desk at Chris “the Natural Chef” Sayegh’s members-only Secret Supper Membership and embarking on a globetrotting, time-traveling, history-inspired, horizon-expanding adventure neither folks will quickly omit — even though we will’t commit it to memory with a number of readability both.
Ahead of digging into the scrumptious main points of our fit to be eaten odyssey (pieced in combination from swiftly scribbled notes and audio recordings), there are some things you must know. First, it’s a members-only scenario as a result of promoting cannabis-infused, restaurant-prepared meals isn’t criminal in California however promoting manufactured THC-infused meals similar to gummies, cookies or drinks is. (You’ll follow for club, which prices $1,000, by way of the Natural Chef web site, then pay for the dinners one after the other. For the needs of this tale, we have been granted one-night-only memberships.)
2d, they’re excited about the name of the game section, proper right down to the password you’ll be supplied for your affirmation e mail (ours used to be MK Extremely, a nod to the CIA LSD mind-control experiments of the Fifties and ’60s). That’s for the reason that per 30 days meal unspools in the similar Santa Monica area typically occupied via Sayegh’s Nostalgia Bar & Living room on an evening it’s now not open to the general public.
For the file:
10:10 a.m. July 8, 2022A prior model of this tale incorrectly described an element of the Leek & Foie dish. It used to be a cracker manufactured from smoked-onion meringue, now not a cracker crowned with smoked-onion meringue.
3rd, you get to select your personal journey, THC-wise. Ahead of you start, you’re requested on your most popular dosage, which will likely be divided some of the meal’s seven savory classes (the muffins are CBD solely). You’ll pass anyplace from 0 milligrams — and sure, there in reality are visitors who take that direction — to infinity and past. Ganja gastronauts who go for greater than 50 milligrams are required to signal a waiver assuming accountability, and with a bit of luck they don’t function any heavy equipment after the meal. One in every of us opted for 10 milligrams of infusion, the opposite selected 50 milligrams — within the title of science, after all.
“I’ve had somebody do 500 milligrams,” our server tells us when we have been seated. Our mouths dropped. “She used to be completely positive. I’d have depended on her to force me round downtown L.A. Everyone is other.”
Sayegh has been retaining infused dinners like this for years, typically in personal properties or random business areas round the city. He says they have been born out of a need to destigmatize the plant and to thrust back towards what he noticed going down within the cannabis-meets-foodstuffs area.
“After we began Secret Supper Membership, it used to be in reality in retaliation to what used to be going down in our trade and what number of people have been being close down after 10 to fifteen years of striking their middle and soul into developing [it],” he says, “so we didn’t in reality have a theme — instead of rebel.”
Chris Sayegh, a.ok.a. the Natural Chef, delivers a dish to diners at his Would possibly 17 Secret Supper Membership in Santa Monica.
(Michelle Groskopf / For The Occasions)
8 years and hundreds of foods later, he’s were given the entire rebel factor on lock: “We do the entirety privately, we’re in reality lawyered up,” he says about navigating the nuances of what’s and isn’t criminal. “And we make certain the entirety is completed via the e-book.” Each and every of the per 30 days Secret Supper Membership foods transferring ahead — beginning with the only we attended in mid-Would possibly — will discover a special theme.
Prematurely of our arrival, we have been knowledgeable by way of e mail that our night’s theme can be “The Origins of Edibles: An Suitable for eating Excursion Across the Global.” It used to be accompanied via a drawing of a solitary silhouetted determine driving a camel — remember the fact that camel; it’s now not the remaining you’ll listen of it — towards the backdrop of sand dunes. (The theme of the June dinner used to be “Film Night time,” which riffed on dishes noticed at the large display. The theme for the following one — scheduled for Aug. 8 — is “Edio: An Suitable for eating Audio Revel in,” for which dishes will likely be according to songs and tune albums.)
Within the Natural Chef’s palms, that theme supposed packing our luggage for twenty fourth century BC China and wrapping up 10 classes later in twentieth century Canada. The night’s departure platform used to be the dimly lit inner of Nostalgia (for the supper-club state of affairs, further tables have been arrange in the living room space), and, together with our fellow vacationers, we totaled 20 in quantity, which made for a convivial however now not crowded, nearly train-dining-car really feel. That, an Natural Chef consultant advised us, is concerning the most choice of diners most popular for every of the 2 dinner seatings. We additionally have been knowledgeable that six of our fellow adventurers had boarded the infused-foodstuffs prepare at a prior dinner. We sat close to one finish of the bar, the place we glimpsed one of the inventive and incessantly cannabis- or terpene-tinged cocktail pairings being made all over the evening, and inside of transparent view of Nostalgia’s, neatly, nostalgic pop artwork: particularly a big black-and-white mural depicting cartoons from the previous couple of many years, with the likes of Johnny Bravo, Ren and Stimpy and Pinky and the Mind adapted to the millennial gaze.
“As we pass down the menu, we’re going to style during the other business routes through which hashish used to be handed alongside because it traveled to the Center East, India, South Africa, and so forth.,” Sayegh explains earlier than we launched into our adventure. “And also you’re going to peer the menu get extra imbued with spices, as a result of because the Silk Street spread out, there have been spices being traded far and wide. It is a in reality amusing menu for us as a result of we get to geek out, but in addition it’s in reality amusing as a result of we realized alongside the best way. Each dish goes to have what used to be to be had in that sure time period in that space.”
Secret Supper Membership diner Prairie Rose watches a bubble full of stone-fruit-scented smoke land in her hand.
(Michelle Groskopf / For The Occasions)
The cannabis-themed amusing wasn’t restricted to the menu, both, because of theatrical clouds of smoke and vapors that seemed tableside all over the evening. Probably the most memorable of those got here at the beginning of the dinner, when a server floated a wonderfully spheroid, aromatic-smoke-filled bubble into the air in entrance folks. When the bubble floated lazily right into a palm held aloft, it popped, freeing a minicloud of stone-fruit-scented smoke.
To find Stephanie’s culinary tackle every direction under, adopted via Adam’s cannabis-focused (and 50-milligram-infused) ideas in italics.
What’s it like to sit down right down to a $295-per-person, 10-course, fine-dining, weed-infused dinner? We didn’t know both. That’s how we discovered ourselves on a overdue spring Tuesday evening, tucking our ft beneath the desk at Chris “the Natural Chef” Sayegh’s members-only Secret Supper Membership and embarking on a globetrotting, time-traveling, history-inspired, horizon-expanding adventure neither folks will quickly omit — even though we will’t commit it to memory with a number of readability both.
Ahead of digging into the scrumptious main points of our fit to be eaten odyssey (pieced in combination from swiftly scribbled notes and audio recordings), there are some things you must know. First, it’s a members-only scenario as a result of promoting cannabis-infused, restaurant-prepared meals isn’t criminal in California however promoting manufactured THC-infused meals similar to gummies, cookies or drinks is. (You’ll follow for club, which prices $1,000, by way of the Natural Chef web site, then pay for the dinners one after the other. For the needs of this tale, we have been granted one-night-only memberships.)
2d, they’re excited about the name of the game section, proper right down to the password you’ll be supplied for your affirmation e mail (ours used to be MK Extremely, a nod to the CIA LSD mind-control experiments of the Fifties and ’60s). That’s for the reason that per 30 days meal unspools in the similar Santa Monica area typically occupied via Sayegh’s Nostalgia Bar & Living room on an evening it’s now not open to the general public.
For the file:
10:10 a.m. July 8, 2022A prior model of this tale incorrectly described an element of the Leek & Foie dish. It used to be a cracker manufactured from smoked-onion meringue, now not a cracker crowned with smoked-onion meringue.
3rd, you get to select your personal journey, THC-wise. Ahead of you start, you’re requested on your most popular dosage, which will likely be divided some of the meal’s seven savory classes (the muffins are CBD solely). You’ll pass anyplace from 0 milligrams — and sure, there in reality are visitors who take that direction — to infinity and past. Ganja gastronauts who go for greater than 50 milligrams are required to signal a waiver assuming accountability, and with a bit of luck they don’t function any heavy equipment after the meal. One in every of us opted for 10 milligrams of infusion, the opposite selected 50 milligrams — within the title of science, after all.
“I’ve had somebody do 500 milligrams,” our server tells us when we have been seated. Our mouths dropped. “She used to be completely positive. I’d have depended on her to force me round downtown L.A. Everyone is other.”
Sayegh has been retaining infused dinners like this for years, typically in personal properties or random business areas round the city. He says they have been born out of a need to destigmatize the plant and to thrust back towards what he noticed going down within the cannabis-meets-foodstuffs area.
“After we began Secret Supper Membership, it used to be in reality in retaliation to what used to be going down in our trade and what number of people have been being close down after 10 to fifteen years of striking their middle and soul into developing [it],” he says, “so we didn’t in reality have a theme — instead of rebel.”
Chris Sayegh, a.ok.a. the Natural Chef, delivers a dish to diners at his Would possibly 17 Secret Supper Membership in Santa Monica.
(Michelle Groskopf / For The Occasions)
8 years and hundreds of foods later, he’s were given the entire rebel factor on lock: “We do the entirety privately, we’re in reality lawyered up,” he says about navigating the nuances of what’s and isn’t criminal. “And we make certain the entirety is completed via the e-book.” Each and every of the per 30 days Secret Supper Membership foods transferring ahead — beginning with the only we attended in mid-Would possibly — will discover a special theme.
Prematurely of our arrival, we have been knowledgeable by way of e mail that our night’s theme can be “The Origins of Edibles: An Suitable for eating Excursion Across the Global.” It used to be accompanied via a drawing of a solitary silhouetted determine driving a camel — remember the fact that camel; it’s now not the remaining you’ll listen of it — towards the backdrop of sand dunes. (The theme of the June dinner used to be “Film Night time,” which riffed on dishes noticed at the large display. The theme for the following one — scheduled for Aug. 8 — is “Edio: An Suitable for eating Audio Revel in,” for which dishes will likely be according to songs and tune albums.)
Within the Natural Chef’s palms, that theme supposed packing our luggage for twenty fourth century BC China and wrapping up 10 classes later in twentieth century Canada. The night’s departure platform used to be the dimly lit inner of Nostalgia (for the supper-club state of affairs, further tables have been arrange in the living room space), and, together with our fellow vacationers, we totaled 20 in quantity, which made for a convivial however now not crowded, nearly train-dining-car really feel. That, an Natural Chef consultant advised us, is concerning the most choice of diners most popular for every of the 2 dinner seatings. We additionally have been knowledgeable that six of our fellow adventurers had boarded the infused-foodstuffs prepare at a prior dinner. We sat close to one finish of the bar, the place we glimpsed one of the inventive and incessantly cannabis- or terpene-tinged cocktail pairings being made all over the evening, and inside of transparent view of Nostalgia’s, neatly, nostalgic pop artwork: particularly a big black-and-white mural depicting cartoons from the previous couple of many years, with the likes of Johnny Bravo, Ren and Stimpy and Pinky and the Mind adapted to the millennial gaze.
“As we pass down the menu, we’re going to style during the other business routes through which hashish used to be handed alongside because it traveled to the Center East, India, South Africa, and so forth.,” Sayegh explains earlier than we launched into our adventure. “And also you’re going to peer the menu get extra imbued with spices, as a result of because the Silk Street spread out, there have been spices being traded far and wide. It is a in reality amusing menu for us as a result of we get to geek out, but in addition it’s in reality amusing as a result of we realized alongside the best way. Each dish goes to have what used to be to be had in that sure time period in that space.”
Secret Supper Membership diner Prairie Rose watches a bubble full of stone-fruit-scented smoke land in her hand.
(Michelle Groskopf / For The Occasions)
The cannabis-themed amusing wasn’t restricted to the menu, both, because of theatrical clouds of smoke and vapors that seemed tableside all over the evening. Probably the most memorable of those got here at the beginning of the dinner, when a server floated a wonderfully spheroid, aromatic-smoke-filled bubble into the air in entrance folks. When the bubble floated lazily right into a palm held aloft, it popped, freeing a minicloud of stone-fruit-scented smoke.
To find Stephanie’s culinary tackle every direction under, adopted via Adam’s cannabis-focused (and 50-milligram-infused) ideas in italics.
