Colorado Sushi Joint Teases Cannabis Pairing Menu

I knew it was only a matter of time! Colorado’s Hapa Sushi restaurant, in what I assume is an effort to both a) support the legal cannabis movement in CO, and b) take advantage of the new market and make some dollars, has released a cannabis/food pairing menu.

In case you’re not a restaurant buff, a pairing menu is (normally) a collection of wines that have been paired with certain foods. The idea is to choose foods that accentuate what the wine brings to the table and vice versa. This is why you often hear that red wines go with red meat and white wines are better suited to seafood and poultry. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it’s kind of an unwritten assumption designed to either help inept, self-proclaimed “foodies” look like they know what they are talking about or simply to give the layperson a point from which to start.

Well…now comes the weed/food pairing menu! The above example from Hapa Sushi is more of a promotional and “what if” kind of tactic, it will not actually be offered at the restaurants. However, I would be shocked if we didn’t start seeing legitimate weed pairing menus showing up before too long.

As a cannabis chef, I have often wondered what this might look like. I think it’s a lot easier to fake it with cannabis. The wines are meant to actually blend flavors with the food as you chew and eat. Presumably, cannabis would have to be smoked prior to eating (at least that’s how my munchies come on, I really don’t smoke and eat at the same time).

I’ll keep thinking about specifics for my own weed/food pairing menu and perhaps make a post about it once I have a decent amount of information to share. For now, have a look at this (hopefully) soon to be ubiquitous cannabis/food pairing menu. I’m not a big sushi guy, but that sour miso salmon looks pretty good paired with the Sour OG!