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The first cannabis-based Arizona kitchen, the Mint Dispensary, sells healthy, order-prepared foods, such as sloppy pizzas and Joes.
Patrick Breen, Republic of Arizona
A large stainless steel table sits in the middle of a brightly lit room with dry ingredients on metal shelves along a wall. Three people in black chef's suits are working carefully, scrolling through the trays of leaves in the two-story commercial ovens and cutting the diced ingredients on plastic cutting boards. One stands, upside down, in front of a chilled sandwich preparation table, assembling a plate of food using carefully neat ingredients in clear plastic containers.
In many ways, this looks like any other commercial restaurant kitchen.
With one exception: these chefs cook with cannabis.
They prepare food with common ingredients such as canned tomato sauce and grated cheese. But here, chefs also use oils and butters infused with THC, the chemical responsible for most of the psychological effects of marijuana. In other words, it is the compound that causes the high associated with marijuana. The CBD, on the other hand, does not do this.
"All you taste are the flavors of food"
The kitchen, open in the autumn of 2018, is located in the dispensary of mint in Guadalupe, near Tempe. With approximately 12,000 square feet of space, it is one of the largest dispensaries in the country. In addition to selling cannabis products, including marijuana blossom and concentrate, customers can buy medicated feeds in the Mint Dispensary kitchen.
The company said the kitchen menu offered a healthier option for patients who may not be able to smoke and would not want to eat traditional edible products, which usually come in the form of candies or pastries and contain a lot of sugar.
Christopher Valle is one of the three chefs of cannabis cooking.
"I come from a medical background and have always wanted to help people," he says. "I think it's even better for them than pharmaceuticals."
"All you taste are the flavors of the food you eat."
The first cannabis kitchen in Arizona
The kitchen, located inside the dispensary, functions as a take-out restaurant. It's the first of its kind in Arizona and one of the first to open in the country.
While other commercial kitchens are allowed to brew foods with THC to make packaged foods, the Mint Dispensary's kitchen is the only one in the state capable of brewing ready-to-eat foods like a restaurant. According to a report from the Arizona Department of Health Services, of the approximately 12,000 pounds of marijuana products sold at Arizona dispensaries in 2018, nearly 5,000 pounds were marijuana-use products , according to the information provided.
Clients must be in possession of a therapeutic cannabis card to be able to enter and buy food that is not intended to be eaten on the premises.
Cannabis cupcakes, pizza and a hamburger and toddlers are exposed to the cannabis kitchen at the Mint dispensary in Tempe, AZ on April 26, 2019. (Photo: Patrick Breen / The Republic)
Raul Molina, owner of the Mint Dispensary, says that cooking is just one of the ways society hopes to bring cannabis into the lives of more people.
"I really do not like to bring cheerleaders," he says. "And by that, I mean people who already love marijuana." "I like to bring in the mother who may have lost her son because of heroin and who thinks that's it." because he started with marijuana. "
To this end, the clinic also has a small space dedicated to educational opportunities around marijuana for medical purposes. There is even an exhibition hall where guests can see the plants growing through a window of the dispensary showroom.
When plants currently living under special culture lamps in the temperature-controlled room begin to produce flowers, Mint Dispensary will be one of the first dispensaries to sell locally grown products.
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What's on the menu?
Krystian Johnson, another Mint chef, brings a restaurant experience prior to this role.
"I love to cook with infused food and the best place to do it legally is here," she says, mixing a bowl filled with Mexican-inspired street corn to a spatula.
Guests at the Mint's kitchen can order from a small menu of hot items such as hamburger, cheese fries, hot wings, pizza and chili-pepper cheese macaroni. All menu items are vegetarian. (The burger and hot wings are made with herbal products.)
Customers can then choose to prepare their food with 25 to 1,000 milligrams of THC. The price varies depending on the amount of THC added to the dish; A pizza with 25 milligrams of THC, for example, costs $ 12.50, while the same pizza dosed with 1,000 milligrams of THC costs $ 75.
Baked goods are also available, including desserts such as cupcakes, cookies, brownies, muffins and homemade homemade pie.
For special events, chefs always create special menus. For Cinco de Mayo, for example, the menu included street corn and tacos.
Currently, kitchen sales account for about 10% of total clinic sales. But Molina said he expects that this part of the company "is progressing with giant leaps". And there have been positive feedback from customers.
"Everything that sells the most outside is crazy," says Molina. "For the Super Bowl, we could not keep up with pizza and wing orders."
An alternative for non-smoking patients
For customers, the kitchen menu offers a new way to consume cannabis. In addition, foods prepared on demand, says Molina, eliminate many of the side effects that can prevent people from enjoying the benefits of the drug.
"There are many people who would prefer it to be so because they can not smoke," said Molina.
In addition to those who can not or do not want to smoke, the kitchen menu offers custom-made foods unlike food products, which are designed to be storage stable and often contain preservatives. In comparison, pastries prepared by the Mint's chefs de cuisine must be cremated if they are not sold within five days of cooking.
Other guests are drawn to the kitchen menu because they are looking for edible products that are not sweet foods or desserts. For these customers, salty options on the menu, such as chicken rolls and cannabis-infused calzones, mean that food can also be a medicine.
"Again, these people are patients," explains Molina.
Reach the reporter to [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram at laurensaria, on Twitter at lhsaria and on Facebook at facebook.com/lsaria.
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