In a world mostly populated by men, the women are shining in San Francisco
San Francisco has always had a lot of diversity to offer, especially with its restaurants. While most of the city’s chefs have traditionally been men, female chefs are proving that they have control of the cannabis culinary creativity in the city and are dreaming up dishes that will make your mouth water.
It still might not be possible to find cannabis-infused items on menus, but underground cannabis dinner parties are regularly found. Some of the options seen on the menus include things like English peas, crème fraiche, smoked tangerines with albacore crudo and much more. The dishes are meant to please all of the senses and are often crafted by women who have no formal culinary training.
A new group has been founded that is helping to ensure there will be legal access to cannabis cuisine, without interference from groups such as the Food & Drug Administration. The Crop-to-Kitchen community was founded by Kimberly Belle and Terrance Alan and includes chefs, edibles makers, restaurateurs and others in the cannabis industry. Belle explains, “The community is working to build pathways to legalize safe, responsibly dosed, on-premise consumption experiences, and to free up edibles manufacturers from current regulatory restrictions that favor shelf-stable food products over healthier, freshly prepared, real foods.”
Crop-to-Kitchen recently launched its second chapter, this one in LA. It was spearheaded by Belle and Alan alongside Rachel Morgan, the co-founder of a culinary cannabis hospitality collective in LA. Morgan is looking toward the future of culinary cannabis cuisine and asserts, “With the recent permitting of [four] onsite consumption lounges in West Hollywood, women are upping the ante on the culinary cannabis game, and are working to open some of the first spaces in the world where people will be able to combine a restaurant dining experience with their love of cannabis. I am very excited to be working on one of these lounges myself, and look forward to seeing the diversity of ways these lounges explore the endless possibilities for culinary cannabis. There is a place for cannabis alongside many classic culinary traditions, and it’s going to be very exciting to see how the community here in Los Angeles creates an entirely new category of dining experiences.”
