Bonus Episode: PSYCHOACTIVE with Ethan Nadelmann and Celebrity Chef Nikki Steward

Ellen Scanlon:

This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over. Welcome to How to Do the Pot, a podcast helping you feel confident about cannabis for health, wellbeing, and for fun. I’m Ellen Scanlon. Today, you’ll hear an episode from Psychoactive, a podcast hosted by longtime Drug War opponent Ethan Nadelmann. As the founder of the Non-Profit Drug Policy Alliance, Ethan helped lead the cannabis legalization movement and has been instrumental in changing our country’s view on drugs. Basically, he is a legend.

Ethan’s podcast, Psychoactive, covers everything from drugs and the human experience to cooking with cannabis, which is what you’ll hear about in today’s episode with celebrity chef, Nikki Steward. Nikki has cooked and curated infused meals for Snoop Dogg, Dave Chappelle and DJ Khaled, and describes her brand as The High-End Affair. It’s such a privilege to be able to share this episode with you, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So without further ado, here’s the conversation between Ethan and Nikki on the podcast Psychoactive. And if this gets you excited about cooking with cannabis, stay tuned. We have you covered for the holidays with some great How to Do the Pot cooking episodes coming soon.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Hello, Psychoactive listeners, I know a lot of times I introduce an episode by saying we have a special treat or this is going to be really different, but this one really is going to be different because my guest today is Chef Nikki Steward. She’s just one of the real stars of the cannabis culinary world and her niche has been basically organizing these dinners, sometimes dinners for hundreds of people, oftentimes for famous people and becoming a really, an important voice in the whole cannabis culinary world. I mean, she’s done stuff for Dave Chappelle, the comedian, his Summer Camp. She’s done stuff for Snoop Dogg, for the record producer and executive DJ Khaled. She’s teamed up with the fashion line Saint Laurent and the Cognac brand Martell, her brand’s called The High-End Affair, which is a traveling infused culinary experience. So Chef Nikki, thanks so much for joining me on Psychoactive.

Nikki Steward:

Yes, you’re so welcome. Thank you for having me, Ethan. I’m excited to be here.

Ethan Nadalmann:

One of my great regrets I’ve yet, I’ve been to a few cannabis infused dinners in my life, but I haven’t done one of yours yet. So I feel a little like what, not having benefited from the actual experiential experience of having done this, but just tell me your philosophy, the way you think about cannabis and its relationship to food.

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, well I love to start with that question because I have to oftentimes remind myself why I’m here and the relationship with cannabis and food and what I feel like it should be with everyone at some point, even if you’re just a novice, is to be able to have cannabis as an ingredient in your pantry, in your home and not be afraid of adding it to food or any sort of wellness regimen in regards to just being a complete holistic like person and keeping that in the vibe, like in restaurants as a chef, we use wine, we use alcohol, we use a lot of those things in food, right? So if you’re using a bourbon and something, the actual APV dissipates.

But cannabis is different because as soon as you activate it with heat and as soon as you activate it inside your body, in your bloodstream, it begins a different type of elevation. And so understanding what your body feels like when it goes through that process is really important for me to always explain. So I’ve always wanted to be able to normalize cannabis. I am a working mother, and so I always remember how I started using cannabis in my regular daily regime and started cooking with it for my own benefits. So yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel about it.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Well, let me ask you, I mean we’re going to be talking obviously about cannabis and how it integrates with people getting high as they’re eating, how it elevates their sense of taste, the pleasure element of it and the taste element of it. But let’s start off with a medicinal side. And I was wondering, have you cooked or been cooking specifically ever in your past for people who are sick dealing with medical conditions and had to try to figure out what sorts of combination of different strains or types of cannabis and food would be most helpful for the people you were trying to help?

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, I mean in some of my earlier days when cooking with cannabis and really working with people to get them to understand what their actual needs were, I had a lot of patients and a lot of patients who had medical cards and some who didn’t. And those circumstances, they’re typically very high dose levels of cannabis to the point where the average person could not normally consume them at that rate. So we’re talking about things like RSO, which is Rick Simpson Oil, which is a very heavy concentrate that a lot of people use to treat cancer and different ailments that are either requiring them to have pain medicine or requiring them to stimulate appetite. And so a lot of those things are used. So I would usually also often focus on what type of level of concentrate and the THC levels that were presented in those in order to figure out what type of food item to put it into, where it’s balanced and still pleasurable. Not overly terpe, but sometimes the higher you get in percentage levels, it’s a little bit stronger on the taste as far as terpenes are concerned. Yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

So I’m curious especially about the evolution in cooking with cannabis. Because I think when I was growing up and there were marijuana brownies and things like that, and even when you were growing up, right? I mean, [inaudible 00:06:43] a lot of that were mostly about butter and coconut oil extractions. And I talk, I don’t know this was some, a chef I was talking to said the butter oil was cooked low and slow for a long period of time with a cannabis flowers strained and baked. And has things changed dramatically since then? I mean, are the old techniques even still used? Have they been displaced with all the new concentrates and all this sort of stuff? Or is it a combination of the old and the new still?

Nikki Steward:

I think it’s a combination of the old and the new still. I mean, at home, consumers who want to make their own tinctures and carrier oils, meaning coconut, olive oil, avocado oil, different things like that, and butter, they still make them at home. There’s a lot of cool devices that you can buy. One of them that I like is called Ardent. It’s very measured out. So it’s nice because you can do these things at home and be a little bit more exact than back in the days when we all first started doing them in crock-pots and straining them in cheesecloth and going through this low decarboxylation of the cannabis and then moving it into a carrier oil. So those machines are great. They do them for you. Now, for me and my own preference as being in a professional field and having to have an expertise in dosing, it won’t work for me because I’m doing volume.

And so my numbers have to be a little bit more finite. So I prefer to use products like a nanotech bioavailability products, which is completely different. And then that’s where I’m at now. But before I went from carrier oils and I went to distillates and then I went to concentrates and isolates and things like that. And now I’m doing, working with a product that the onset, when it goes through your body, it completely bypasses your liver and goes straight to your bloodstream, which means that it takes less time, which means that instead of this being like, I’m waiting for this brownie to kick in or waiting for these edibles to kick in, it’s been about an hour, so let me eat another one. Instead of that, it’s like you’re filling this within 15 minutes.

Ethan Nadalmann:

I have to say on the dosing thing, I might have only been to a few cannabis infused dinners, and I remember one, each dish they said, this is going to be 10 milligrams THC, and so and so milligrams of CBD or maybe there was, I don’t know, some CBNs or something like that in it. And I remember being struck at the whole dinner called for more or less 70 milligrams. And I’m thinking when I take my edible and want to get pretty high go for massage, 10 milligrams is a solid dose for me. And there have been times when I’ve taken 20 milligrams and got too high.

And yet what I noticed with that dinner was that I took 50, 60, 70 milligrams over the course of some hours, no alcohol. And this was downtown in Manhattan. And then I was still able to get on the subway, go back home and just lie on my couch and have a very wonderful, chill high. And I’m curious, what is it about the fact that when you’re combining with food that somehow the amount you can consume, that one can consume of the THC is so much higher than when I’m just doing a simple edible, like a chocolate or a candy or something like that?

Nikki Steward:

I’ll tell you why.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Okay.

Nikki Steward:

So most chefs, we do a very interesting balancing act, and I do it at a very high rate, meaning that when you’re getting THC in certain courses of the food, I’m always balancing you with high doses of CBD in other ways that you may not realize. Like my entire bar, all of the tinctures, all of the syrups, all of the bitters, they have CBD in them. And so when you’re having a cocktail, even if we have a low, sometimes we do a very low amount of alcohol, just like less than an ounce, less than a half ounce sometimes just to get the flavor. The CBD on top of that is completely balancing you and knocking you back down. So same thing when I also do certain courses, I’ll do different ratios of three to one, one to one, two to ones.

I’m literally just balancing you with a certain portion of CBD to your THC so you can consume higher amounts. Some guests are what we call lightweights, meaning that you may not get over 20 to 25 milligrams the entire dinner. And then some are mid-level, which are 45 to 50, and then we have our 75 to a 100. So we have some of our VIP guests, they’re just like lay it on me, so we lay it on them, and then they also get to take home food. That’s part of you being a VIP, you get to go food.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Aha, aha.

Nikki Steward:

So that’s a cool thing. So you can go and get high at home or you can put it in the freezer and heat it up when you’re ready. But yeah, so it is just a balancing act.

Ethan Nadalmann:

And the CBD is crucial to this, you’re saying that that helps take, there’s, if there was no CBD involved, people would be getting much higher, maybe too high, too fast without that?

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, I mean that is definitely so. So you would, I’m timing every course at 25 to 30 minutes because I’m allowing enough time in between each course to allow your elevation to occur and for you to try to settle into that. And so depending on where I’m at as far as how I start off low and slow with the courses, I literally come out and visit every single table and have a conversation with every person just so I can make sure that they’re elevating safely and comfortably. And so, like I said, it’s a combination of being a caregiver and a chef and also a scientist. And I studied pharmacy in college, so that’s also a part of that bedside manner that I have as far as making sure that quote, unquote, “your patient is okay and not having any issues with their medication.”

Ethan Nadalmann:

So Nikki, I mean you got this degree in pharmacology. How did that really impact your evolution as a chef and a cannabis chef?

Nikki Steward:

In studying in pharmaceutical sciences, you definitely have to go over what it means to properly dose someone. I did a lot of my studies in compounding pharmacy, which is the creation of drugs, and then also moving into retail pharmacy, which is the dispensing of drugs. And so always understanding what interacts with the body and understanding what contra indicates a medicine with something else. If you’ll get a prescription and be like, “Hey, if you’re taking a lot of grapefruit in, maybe you shouldn’t take this medicine” or if you, like all these things. So I’m always very mindful, like if there is a guess that is on other medication, I’m always taking that into consideration and that experience.

But I’m also taking into consideration what a healthy dose of cannabis is and how it can sit in your bloodstream and making sure any other medications that you’re taking, it doesn’t interfere with that. So I mean, there are times where any, especially even getting into mushroom journeys or any other type of psychoactive, you do have to take in consideration if people are on SSRIs or they’re on heavy narcotics and other things. Just so I’m mindful. And there are times that sometimes we have to safely or regretfully decline sometimes experiences for people based upon if they’re already on a lot of medications, which means that we just ask them to readjust certain things before they come to dinner or enter into an experience with us.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Right, right, right. Now, tell me in terms of the other degree, I mean, do I assume that these dinners are either no alcohol or very low alcohol?

Nikki Steward:

Very low, yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Yeah. Because those things would not necessarily, I mean, people would just get too high.

Nikki Steward:

People would get way too high. Everyone, not everyone loves a crossfade, but some people enjoy being crossfade. And some people it could take a very not good turn because when you’re crossfading too much with alcohol and cannabis, you can get dizzy, you can pass out, all those things. So during that course of time that I’m with you for the dinner, you’re not consuming alcohol at very high rates. Most of our cocktails are mocktails. And then the ones that do have alcohol, like I said, they’re less than a half ounce just so you can get the effect. We actually have started brewing different types of teas to mimic certain types of alcohol influence, but it’s actually tea.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Mm-hmm. So sticking on this issue of dosing, so I heard that you just recently did a dinner at South by Southwest.

Nikki Steward:

I did, yes.

Ethan Nadalmann:

And I reached out to a bunch of friends who were there, and one of them, Steve DeAngelo, who’s the marijuana entrepreneur and activist, and I said, “so what’d you think?” And he wrote back to me yesterday, he goes, “Nikki gave the best pre-dinner preparation speech I’ve ever heard.” And then they had come down packages overdosers. And then he said the food was mostly Asian fusion-ish, multilayer flares and textures. But tell me, what was that pre-dinner prep speech that you gave to your dinner [inaudible 00:16:52] tell me more about your dinner at South by Southwest?

Nikki Steward:

Of course. First of all, I love Steve and Last Prisoners Project, so shout out to him. So the prep speech before the first course is served is really kind of like an adult conversation, but it builds one-on-one to every individual. It’s like, “Hey, I know we’re all adults, and I know sometimes we over consume or maybe we have the thoughts of over consuming, but I have measured each one of these courses out very meticulously, and so I want to make sure that you are consuming them properly.” And then I also have a conversation with them as if they feel themselves getting too high, too fast. If the tips of your ears get warm, that’s usually a little indication like, well, something’s happening here. And so I ask them to raise their hand and try to be responsible for themself as best as they can, or the person next to them, tell them that, “Hey, I may need a hand.”

And a server or anyone that is working the event on my staff will come to you and will get you, we call an undo. An undo is a product that I use to bring your high down in about 30 minutes, and it’s a really dope product that I’ve been using for the last few years at my events, and it works really well. So sometimes midway during the dinner, we had people even on Monday that were like, “Hey, yeah, I need to undo.” They take it. And I still see them sitting there an hour later, still consuming. I’m like, “Hey, are you good?” They’re like, “of course, I’m back. I need another, I’m ready for course five.” So part of that is that conversation, but I also want people to enjoy the experience and enjoy each other and network and move around and talk to the people at your table. And so I ask them to put their phones away. So I do have a no phone policy, and it’s just for you to be in that moment, in that space.

And I don’t mind if you take pictures of the menu or the plate, but not of each other unless it’s your specific group. You know what I mean? So that’s part of that policy. Typically, in other markets, we have great things like lifts that will sponsor us to make sure everyone gets a ride home at a discounted rate. So we have a lot of little fail safes to make sure that you are good. And I don’t care if you need to sit for an extra hour while we’re cleaning up and breaking down, that’s fine. We’ll take care of you, but we want to make sure you are A-OK to get home.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Can you say, what are some of the ingredients in that undo that help people come down from a too high high?

Nikki Steward:

Oh yeah, of course. One of the, and I’ll tell you, it’s a product you can readily find online. One of the ingredients is cold pressed olive oil. And so what that does, if you’re realizing that part of the reason you’re too high is because you’ve got all, your endocannabinoid system is just going crazy right now. So what this does is it goes and it kind of sucks all of that down. And so there’s vitamin E in there, and there’s also [inaudible 00:20:11] oil, and it’s just three ingredients and just glycerin, purified water, and it’s just lipids and it’s stripping your system, it’s going through your bloodstream and just pulling everything down.

Ethan Nadalmann:

And when it comes to the dosing, I mean, obviously there’s some room for error in terms of whether it lands up being four milligrams or six in a dish or whatever. But I mean, when you’re cooking for dozens, if not hundreds, how do you standardize it if you’re doing stuff in a blender? I mean, how do you make sure that each piece of pie or each entree has got roughly the same do in it? And are you actually testing any of these things periodically to see what the dosage level is?

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, this is math and science really right here. I mean, of course, we’ll have to just take how many people times how many ounces each portion is times, and then divide that by how many milligrams you want it to be. And then, I mean, literally just going through this math. And so typically if I have a 100 guests, 200 guests, 300 guests, breaking that down as far as in the bulk amounts to, and then we have to make sure the portions are correct upon serving, right? And then there’s other times where I have to individually dose depending on the type of product that I’m using. And individually dosing is exactly what it is, meaning that I have to go over each portion times a 100, 200, 300, which is a little bit more tedious, but it is a very exact, and those are usually the two ways. It’s just a lot of math. And I thank God that I was in a lot of science classes in school that I can A plus B, equal C, then divide it by this and then go through that process.

Ethan Nadalmann:

And when you’re doing your cooking, I mean, look, most chefs you’re constantly tasting to make sure you’re getting it right. I mean, do you land up getting high as you’re cooking and tasting, or have you developed a sufficiently high enough tolerance that it’s not really hitting you that way?

Nikki Steward:

Both. Honestly, both. There are times where, yes, I have totally fucked myself up for sure, but then there are times where my tolerance is so high that most people would just be rocked. And I’m usually like, “oh, okay, let’s breathe through it and finish this out.” Yeah, I mean, I’ve definitely done it. I don’t think that any person that makes edibles or infuses things hasn’t, but what I do do, I will tell you this. Because I’m really very specific and very intentional about flavors, I do wait until the very last possible moment to infuse it just because I want to make sure the flavors are correct. And so before I put anything, any cannabis product in there, I’m getting it to a point where I’m like, “okay, this is exactly how it’s going to taste. This is the product that I was looking for, this is the end result.” And then I add the cannabis product to that.

Ethan Nadalmann:

I see. But the cannabis product, I mean, there is an element in which it’s also part of the taste. I mean, maybe are terpenes the key element? And if so, can you explain to the audience what terpenes are? And when you say you want to get the taste just right before you add the cannabis element, but cannabis is going to affect the taste, how does all that play out together?

Nikki Steward:

Yeah. So terpenes do play a role in it, but I’m also a person that am split on the execution of cannabis dishes with high terpe profiles. And terpe profiles, I mean, that’s the flavors, it’s the essential oil of the plant, so-

Ethan Nadalmann:

That’s the terpene [inaudible 00:24:08]

Nikki Steward:

That’s what a terpene is.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Right. And not just with cannabis, but even things like teas and herbs and things like that.

Nikki Steward:

Exactly, exactly 100%. And so a lot of times the terpene flavors just vary. And so if you have a limonene more profile or a linalool profile, you may have some nodes that are a little bit more like dank and a little bit dirty. I mean that in a nice way, I don’t mean dirty like gross, but I just mean it has a little bit more of a rustic smell to it. But all of those will change the way the food tastes, the way it tastes on your pallet. So what I do is I separate the terpenes from the actual product that I like to, so I like to iso, like I have products that isolate it out. So meaning there’s more of a muted, like a neutral taste. And then what we do is we take terpene concentrates and we add it at the end. So you get it on the nose, but you don’t get it so much on the tongue and the taste when you’re consuming it.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Are there particular terpenes that you most love to cook with and are the terpenes that people like in food, oftentimes the same ones that they like when they’re consuming or smoking, for example?

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, I mean, when you’re smoking a lot, oftentimes that very fragrant, fresh, citrusy, going through your nose, or like I said, the piney taste going through your nose. So people enjoy tasting their weed. That is for sure. There’s a whole marketing campaign around flavors of cannabis. And cannabis often takes on names that are sweet and fun, like gelatos and sherbets, like these things like that. And so a lot of times I do prefer things that I can mesh well with actual, like lemon grass. Like what could I pair with a lemon grass, maybe Durban Poison, that’s something that’s a little bit more fresh and lemony and citrusy.

So I can compare that with something in a dish. So I’m very selective when it comes to that. And I only use terpene isolation on things that I think that make sense. There are often times where some things just don’t make sense and it will just ruin the flavor. Things that are light and soft and fluffy, certain profiles of certain terpenes will just overpower it and you won’t even get what I’m trying to give you. So yeah, I am a person that likes to play around with that. Like I said, it makes sense when you’re doing it at home, it’s very hard to isolate that. So when you do things at home and you’re making things from just flower, you’re going to get all of the terpes that are in that flower.

Ethan Nadalmann:

And by the way, you just say for the audience, because here we’re dealing with a homonym that enters into this discussion. There’s flour and there’s flower, there’s flour, F-L-O-U-R, right? And there is cannabis flour, F-L-O-U-R. And then there’s the flower, the part of the plant, which is the one that basically people like to smoke or vape or even use for food. And so when you’re talking about flower, you’re talking about the F-L-O-W-E-R, right?

Nikki Steward:

Yes, I am. Definitely, yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Right. But are you ever using a cannabis flour, F-L-O-U-R?

Nikki Steward:

You know what, that’s something that’s really kind of a little tough thing to do, but not completely if you, because cannabis has such a oily residue. And so when you’re trying to make something as fine as flour, you have to use something, maybe like an isolate or things like that, something that’s water soluble. So it hasn’t been done really well, but I foresee it.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Aha.

Nikki Steward:

That is my end game of being here, meaning that you should be able to have these types of products in your pantry and a diversity of them. And so it shouldn’t just stop at oils and butters. It should be able to be in things that are much softer, like flour or sugar, or even baking soda and things like that. There’s a lot of different things that we use every day in the kitchen that if I’m able to slide cannabis in there somewhere, I think will all be happy campers. I feel like I’m going to have a Trader Joe’s [inaudible 00:28:45] with cannabis products.

Ethan Nadalmann:

That sounds like quite an ambition. So Nikki, I mean, just if you think back on all the meals you put together, what’s the one that just stands out in your memory [inaudible 00:29:00].

Nikki Steward:

I kind of have two, and I’ll do it really quick. So my very first dinner that was an infused dinner was for Snoop, and it was the launch of his media company called Merry Jane. It was a campaign they were doing, and that was my first challenge when it was you have to pull out this pharmaceutical sciences bag and remember all of your old stuff because there was 250 people. I had a cannabis company drop me off four-and-a-half pounds of just flour. And they were just go to work. And I was like, “shit, well, I’ve got to break all of this down into different methods that I can use to infuse food.” And it was so many celebrities there, and I was just like, I really hope I get this right. I mean, because it was really my first time doing 250 people and a large setting and six to seven courses in Hollywood.

And so, you have in the back of your mind, don’t fuck this up. And so I did a pretty good job. And then consequently years later, I’m having a party in Oakland and in walks Mike Dirnt from Green Day, and I was like, “oh, hey.” And then in walks E40 and then all these other, like Gary Payton, all of these other, and that was a moment that I was like, huh, because all of them said, “I’ve been waiting to meet you.” And I was like, “you have? That’s interesting.” You know what I mean? So you’re having your ’90s childhood, like Green Day, and then you’re having hip hop icons and then basketball legends, and all of these folks there communing and having a great time with regular folks as well and influencers.

And those are all sorts of just two very moments where I was just like, “I think I’m probably doing something right.” And the food, it’s always going to be great. So I’m not worried about the food necessarily. I know my food translates. I’m also just worried about making sure everyone’s having a good time and cannabis brings everyone around the pot. So here’s a double entendre for you, around the pot and around the pot. So it’s a food and weed. And so I’m pretty good at bringing people around the pot.

Ethan Nadalmann:

You ever have any say over the music that’s in the background?

Nikki Steward:

Yes, I’m a vibes person, so I select all the DJs and the bands personally. And I also get them to understand where the influence is with the music. I have a curated list that people share called Vibes Curated by Chef Nikki. And they’re really just kind of more up tempo, like when you’re consuming, I can’t play slow music because everyone is going to be in this soft space and wanting to sit down. So I have to have a music that keeps a certain tempo that’ll keep people mingling and keep people upbeat and sing along and saying hi to their friends. So yeah, I have a lot of influence over the music, that is really important to me.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Now, I was at one other dinner where the chefs started saying that they wanted to use not just the THC aspects of the cannabis plant or the CBD or CBNs, but they also wanted to be using other parts of the cannabis plant, the seed, the stalks, the roots, and the leaves in part because of the health benefits in those. I don’t know if there was a flavor element to it, but what about you? Are you using those other elements of the cannabis plant, and if so, is it about health or flavor or what?

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, I think it’s about a lot of things. I mean, as chefs, we use things for garnish a lot. So oftentimes you’ll see the actual leaf used as a garnish or some sort of preparation on plating. And then often you may see different parts maybe cut up as part of an herb, like that is like a finishing herb. So I think that is important for sure. I have a very soft intro with most people because most people are not just going to chew the actual plant. I mean I would, because, but I’m weird like that. But actually getting someone to nibble on the stem or the stalk or seeds is, that’s a very direct angle. So I’m trying to get people to normalize this consumption of cannabis in general and then working them in with other types of step ups, which I believe is where we’re at having other health benefits.

But I think we’re first getting people to realize, like there’s so many benefits of cannabis undiscovered and the ones we have are so immense and they’re happening all the time. And then you’re having all these other things, people are starting to learn about THCA, THCV, and then people are learning about all these other CBN, CBGs and then they’re learning about delta-8, delta-9. It’s like there’s a lot of options. And so when there’s so many options, the average person is just like, “I want to get high.” And I’m like, “all right, cool, I got you there. So let’s also talk about what else you can get out of being high.” And then giving them that soft intro to understanding this whole new world of cannabis. It’s pretty huge. I tell people the same thing about mushrooms, it’s a whole world, it’s huge. It’s undiscovered, like all these different strains and we’re at the tip of this.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Mm-hmm. Well, I’m curious because ever since I started smoking weed when I was about 18, I used to love just getting high before going out to a restaurant. And sometimes it has the advantage of making food that wasn’t very good oftentimes tastes really good and making food that was already very good taste fantastic. And in fact, now as I’ve got an older, I actually make an effort not to consume cannabis before I eat, because then I’ll eat too much. I have friends like that. They just can’t do cannabis anymore because the munchies are so much that they just overeat and they need to keep their weight down and all this sort of stuff. But what I’m wondering about is, is there something distinctive about cooking for people who are high, like the way in which cannabis elevates our senses, including our olfactory senses, our taste buds, is there something about cooking it that actually you shift what you’re doing or the way you’re thinking about the dish because you know your consumer is going to be high at that time and therefore tasting the dish differently than they would if they were not high?

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, that’s funny. Because I think about that when I’m high and I’m like, “Ooh, what would taste really good?” I go through that myself. And so a lot of times when I’m doing menus, I’m kind of in the middle of that, so I kind of transport myself into the guests, the diners like psyche. And so the things that taste really good when you’re high are things that are fatty or sugary, like the spices on there make a difference. Things that are spicy or warm spices really hit hard. So how can I figure this out and get you a really good experience where it’s not driving up your cholesterol, I’m not giving you a bunch of artificial flavors and sugars and so knowing that you’ll be high, what I do is in between there I give you food that is uninfused intentionally, meaning that I have number one dishes that come out in between the courses that are like filler foods that you’re like, “oh my God, is that 24 carat gold, mac and cheese? What the fuck? I want it.”

So you eat it. So I have these moments where people are like, “I didn’t know that I wanted that until you set it out, but it’s such a great idea.” And so I like to have fun. I do very refined dishes, but in between there I offer very playful things and things that are very relatable and very fun because who doesn’t like cheese when they’re high sometimes unless you’re lactose. So we’ll give you another option, so. Yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

I got to tell you something. I say the single most spectacular culinary experience of my life and I need to tell you about it because then it will lead into a set of other questions here. But there used to be a restaurant in the upper west side of New York, it was the one really high end restaurant in the upper west side, which is generally not known for its restaurant life and it was called Picholine. And Picholine had the one outstanding cheese expert in New York at that time who I think became the dean and mentor as other restaurants began to develop and they would have 50 or a 100 different types of cheeses, he would come over, he had a story for everyone. And I went there for, I don’t know, it was my daughters or friend’s birthday dinner or something like that. And we ordered the big cheese sampling at the end, but we were so full that we couldn’t eat it.

So I took the whole cheese selection home in a takeaway bag and put in the fridge for a couple of days. And then on that Saturday, a couple days later, my partner was with me and she and I, we decided we were going to do mushrooms together [inaudible 00:38:38] psychedelic mushrooms. And so I took the cheese out of the fridge just thinking we might want it in the evening. We want it to warm up. And so we had a wonderful mushroom trip that day, that afternoon. And as we’re coming down and as this appetite slowly starts to develop and because it takes a while after motion experience before you really want to eat again, your brain has to have to click over in your taste buds.

And I’ll tell you, started to dig into that cheese and, I mean, it is head and shoulders of any of the culinary experience in my life. It’s like the blue cheeses. It was 1000 things going off in my brain and in my mouth. I mean I tasting every little, and it just tasted like this living explosion of this spectacular taste in my mouth and it was remarkable. Now I’m curious, what’s your experience with cooking with mushrooms and are you noticing it? Have you heard a story like mine from other people with mushrooms as well?

Nikki Steward:

I mean, yeah. So anytime that I do mushrooms, I’m very intentional about what I’m going to eat afterwards. And I think that this all kind of plays into that heightened sense, like those brain receptors just being activated from even THC and psilocybin. I mean, I’ve also had the same experience from LSD after I’ve come out into this space and it’s like the food that I taste is like the garden of the gods. It’s like, “what is this? It is so amazing.” And it could have been the most simple thing, but I’m like, “this mango, you got to be kidding me. Where do we get this mango from? Whole Foods, no way.” I’m like, “it’s better than what I ever expected.” And so, I mean, cooking with mushrooms is a little bit different, especially if it’s psychoactive mushrooms. Then there’s a lot of different things that I don’t do when I’m bringing those two things together in the food world, because the experience when you’re consuming mushrooms and your tummy, like if you have certain things paired with it, it may not go over so well.

Those things, I would not put dairy with mushrooms upon consumption, but I would do it hours later. And that, like just your experience with the cheese, it was like, “wow, that was exceptional.” But if you gave somebody mushrooms with a grilled cheese sandwich, I don’t know, it would get with the butter, like your stomach would be like, “wow, this is a bit much stress for a second.” So there are also different types of my own set of protocols that I follow when I’m doing things with psilocybin, meaning that I prefer to keep the sugar low, I prefer to keep the dairy low or none. I prefer to not have it with things that are extremely spicy. I prefer to also make sure that there’s a balance of some other adaptogenics and some other things for your belly, like ginger, even making it into a little, taking the mushrooms maybe with some coconut aminos and some ginger and accelerating the experience through there because it’s a softer landing in your system. And with citrus, also using citrus to accelerate that as well, so.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Essentially, you’re reminding me that there’s a group of friends for the last few decades who we occasionally get together and typically do MDMA together, although occasionally mushrooms, but developed a tradition where at the end of it I would go out and I’d go to the kosher deli around the corner from my apartment and kosher, because I keep kosher, none of my friends do. And I’d buy, I’d get a dozen rare hamburgers and we’d come back and it was the most extravagant experience as I think the body was just craving that protein rush or something. And it became a tradition with us where the hamburger was the thing we had, it was what felt right at that time.

Nikki Steward:

And I think that is important. I mean, when you’re listening to your body in that way and your body is saying, “Hey, why don’t you just go ahead and grab this, trust me later.” And you trust that process, your body is settling into that space because especially when any of those classifications, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, those things, when your body is getting propelled into a whole nother serotonin space and when you’re getting back into balancing into planet earth and you want to replenish your body, I think it is important to do what your body is asking. In the same way after MDMA, I have a very set protocol of things that I consume, and it’s usually the first up is a green smoothie. I have to have a smoothie bowl for some reason.

I mean, I don’t know what that is. I just always have a smoothie bowl. But then after that I just treat my body really nice, a really nice quality piece of fish. And then I go into, like I said, I don’t know how, if everyone is this intentional with food, but I would like for them to be like when they’re coming in and out of experiences and just thinking about, “hey, how do I replenish my body to balance? How do I settle back and integrate into this space after being a little bit gone for a bit?” You know what I mean?

Ethan Nadalmann:

You have obviously these famous clients like Dave Chappelle who I guess lives [inaudible 00:44:19] in Ohio or Snoop Dogg. But so when people are contracting with you and they’re saying, “we want a dinner.” I mean, I know you, I’ve read that you like, like Asian stuff is among your favorite stuff to cook with, but do you get requests both for types of food but also for types of cannabis or types of concentrates or types of things like that. I mean how much are, as opposed to people just saying, “Hey, Chef Nikki, do your best and give me an Asian thing.” Do you get more specific things or people asking you to want to use the cannabis out of their own garden or their favorite brand or something like that?

Nikki Steward:

No, I don’t ever really get very specific things. I mean, most people pretty much trust me and I change a menu, every time I do an event the menu is different. I mean, you might have a couple of the same things, which are just like your fan favorites, but I always change the menu and it definitely is a lot Asian influence. I did my culinary studies in Thailand, some of them. So I settle into that space really well. But it’s like with Dave, it’s just majority of the time, 95% of the time it’s regular food, not infused.

Because what I’m doing with him as just being his chef, I’m also feeding the guests that come in the green room or different types of shows and things like that. So we don’t have people on stage like blitz, so number one. But when I’m asked to do an infused dinner, I may get from the talent or the artist what they like in general, the types of foods that they do and what they don’t like. And I’ll use that as an influence on the menu for the evening. The reason why I don’t do weddings is because they have so many requests [inaudible 00:46:11] sometimes I lose my creative abilities. And so I like to do these type of things because my team and I, we can do all of the bucket list things that we were thinking and all the recipes we wanted to try. So yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

And when you’re serving, is there a menu where each dish is described, not just the food ingredients, but also the THC and CBD levels?

Nikki Steward:

Yes, a 100%. So the menu is written out to be exact, what’s in the ingredients, how much THC, how much CBD, and then whether there’s vegan options, vegetarian, things like that, so gluten free. I still take into consideration dietary restrictions. So I’ll always have plan A and B or option one and two, but typically most of my guests are like, we can’t wait to see what’s on the menu, so.

Ethan Nadalmann:

I know you mentioned earlier that you had got in your degree in pharmaceutical sciences and that helped you in terms of becoming a cannabis chef because there’s so much science involved in this now. But I’ve also heard that you also had a familial background that sort of opened you up both to cooking and to cannabis.

Nikki Steward:

Yes, familiar, yes, I have familial path. I thought you said familiar, but you meant family.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Yeah.

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, I’m like, yes, I have both familiar and familial.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Aha.

Nikki Steward:

So in the beginning, my grandfather was just, his nickname was doc. And my grandfather to be known, we’re born on the same day for both Scorpios. And so his experience when he was younger, he used to take plant medicine, forge plant medicine and create different tinctures and salves and he would sell them to just whoever would come to him. So he kind of got the nickname doc. And when I first heard it as a kid, it was that he would have guys that have almost STDs and then he would make a salve and he would just sell that to them. And anyway, it became a hit. So I draw inspo from a lot of that. I also started smoking cannabis pretty young, 15. And I remember my experience getting older, like a older teenager, I would have that conversation with my dad. And I realized that as I grew older, that my father was using cannabis a lot as recovery because he owns a construction company.

And so that’s a lot of hard work, pouring concrete, building houses and stuff like that. And so I was like, “oh, this whole time I didn’t know what those seeds were,” now that I know and retrospect what those seeds were, that I was playing with. And I took the inspiration of how my family used it as an actual medicine and how my family used it to heal themselves. And so I had a different perspective on it growing up. And so I was like, I’m not really trying to make, I will make salve or some sort of tincture, but I’m really good at food, so how can I give you the best experience in health and wellness upon consumption of food items? So yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Mm-hmm. And you basically, I mean, born and raised and lived most of your life in Ohio.

Nikki Steward:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I went to Ohio State and I’m literally, I mean I live out my suitcase pretty much now, but I travel everywhere doing dinners and talks and panels and things like that. But Ohio is like my stomping grounds, so I owe a lot of my grit [inaudible 00:50:17] to Ohio.

Ethan Nadalmann:

I mean, Nikki, I’ll tell you, you’re not my first Ohio State grad on, just a little while back I had on a young woman named Cat Packer.

Nikki Steward:

Oh yeah, I know Cat.

Ethan Nadalmann:

You know Cat and you know multiple degrees from Ohio State and just spent the last five years trying to regulate marijuana in Los Angeles as the point person in the city.

Nikki Steward:

There’s some nice connections. I mean, I admire Cat for what she’s done for sure, and what she’s been trying to do. And I know as she’s had a tough time, her and I have never met personally, but I respect the hell out of her because she has a very tough job. That is a tough ass job because you have a lot of people on both sides, and she’s in the middle and she’s got people barking down her neck. It’s hard. It’s very hard. And then-

Ethan Nadalmann:

Oh yeah, she stepped in, I think she was 26 years old when she took on that job.

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, that’s a huge responsibility.

Ethan Nadalmann:

I think she did it for five years. I think she’s just announced she’s stepping down after five years. But I mean, sometimes I talk to people who also had a bad experience with cannabis when they’re younger and they’re kind of wary of it, they got paranoid or they got this or that, or very anxious. Typically, that first experience happened when they were in a social situation where they had to be on with people they didn’t know or feel comfortable with. And I’ll say, really, the thing to try to do is if you do want to try it again, try to do it in a place, preferably just one person you’re really close with and maybe outdoors and trying to be in a very calm environment. But what I’m wondering specifically on the culinary aspect is I wonder if for people who’ve had a bad experience smoking it and are wary of that element, and so therefore they’re staying away from it. I wonder if for them doing it in the food way, the way that you’re doing might be a safer, easier way to enjoy cannabis on occasion.

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, you’re very correct. It is a safer way to enjoy cannabis on occasion, and people’s bodies respond differently. So I have people that come to my events and I have people that I speak with that cannot smoke, and so they prefer to use any non combustible forms of cannabis, which means whether it’s consuming it by mouth or transdermal or things like that, and they fare better in that space. And then I have some people who can smoke a house down, but in edible [inaudible 00:52:43] 5 to 10 milligrams, they’re like, “whoa, whoa, whoa, this is, I can’t handle this.”

So I do take into consideration where you’re at with your cannabis journey and like I said, try to give you a middle ground. But like I said, I do think that it is a much more agreeable thing. As far as demographics are concerned, women do prefer to consume cannabis by mouth usually. It’s a lot more like, I don’t know, you don’t smell weed and it’s a little bit more discreet and you can have something in your purse and just take a little nibble and get on with your day. And so I do get a lot of feedback that they love this because you can have these experiences with wine. There’s like cannabis wine, there’s champagne, there’s all these cool things that we have now that can make you feel fancy for that moment, so.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Yeah [inaudible 00:53:49] years ago I was in Barcelona and I landed up going to some interesting bar political scene, and I thought it was just going to be a kind of cannabis coffee shop. It turned out there were actually people using heroin there and things like that. And so I ended up sitting down having dinner with a number of people who actually were actually not just smoking cannabis, using heroin, but not me, but they were. And then there was a bottle on the table of cannabis infused absinthe, and I reached for the bottle and was about to take some, and a whole bunch of people at the table, including the guys doing heroin, said, “Ethan, be careful with that stuff. That packs a punch.”

Nikki Steward:

Yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

So I mean, that combination of alcohol, certainly strong alcohol with cannabis can do something. Well, let me ask you this. I mean, obviously there’s this booming world of cannabis chefs and there’s the cannabis edibles world and all of this sort of stuff. Are there trends in this world the same way there are in fine dining?

Nikki Steward:

I’m still thinking about that story you just told [inaudible 00:54:56]

Ethan Nadalmann:

Oh, okay. If you want to comment on that, go for it.

Nikki Steward:

I was trying to gather what you were saying. I was like, “okay, here we go, I’m doing a checklist, cannabis, heroin absinthe.” I was like, “oh, [inaudible 00:55:09] list here, okay.”

Ethan Nadalmann:

Well, my world crosses a lot of drugs in a lot of different sorts of people.

Nikki Steward:

No, yeah, I was down for the story. I was just trying to sort out the consumption and how that feels. I was like, I don’t know how that goes. But anyway, so trends as far as cannabis and culinary, some people get into the cannabis space and they just, they’ll say, “I’m a cannabis chef,” and I’m like, “okay, well if I take chef off of it, can you still go toe to toe with us in the kitchen? Or are you in confection, are you in pastry?” There’s so many different segments of where you can go in this world of cannabis, but typically it starts with the actual chef converting into this space. Sometimes it’s backwards where you are in the space and you become a chef or you try to create these experiences. So as far as trends are concerned, there’s not a whole lot of them.

I see a lot of people who kind of like barrel themself in very specific genres like pastry and confection, which is your gummies and which is cookies and all those type of things, candies and maybe some finer pastries. There’s a company that I like called Herve, and it’s macarons. So you have Parisian style macarons. Then as far as chefs are concerned, I think chefs are just doing their chef thing. You know what I mean? So you’re pretty much are sticking in the same aesthetic you’ve been cooking in and you’re just adding that ingredient. So yeah, I think that’s pretty much where we’re at as far as the trends. I mean, a lot of us trying to do really cool things and bringing the same types of restaurant experiences to you, but with cannabis and not just something simple like a cheeseburger. You know what I mean? It’s not saying that’s not good, but you are paying for an experience. I’m going to give you that, so.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Well, so I’m curious, so you have this bigger growing world, and when I was doing the preparation for this episode here, I look back, the New York Times had a piece about cannabis chefs about seven, eight years ago. Then I came across somebody, Mindy Segal, who they said, I think was the first chef who had won one of those prestigious James Beard awards for culinary accomplishment based in Chicago. She was, I guess the first one moving into the cannabis space. So there’s this growing world and I wonder, I mean, you’re obviously part of it. What’s it like, I mean, the elements of collaboration, competition, identifying your niches. Are there gatherings or conferences yet for people cooking with cannabis?

Nikki Steward:

No, there’s nothing, honestly.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Hmm. Wow.

Nikki Steward:

No, there’s nothing. I mean, but it’s starting. It was really in getting the world to notice that this is a thing. Of course, at some point, I feel like James Beard may want to introduce a real category where they literally gauge all of the chefs that are doing anything in cannabis. There’s not a convention or a meeting of the mind. At some point, I would like to be able to introduce regulatory things, meaning like certifications, because not everyone understands how to properly dose, and you can really mess someone up pretty quickly if you’re not, a little bit of knowledge and education and some tender loving care in there. If you don’t realize what you’re doing, you can really push somebody over the top. And so myself and I’m sure there’s some other chefs who are wanting to see that.

And the more and more we do things like podcasts and interviews, I just recently was reached out to by Bon Appetit, so they’re covering me for 4/20, but that’s a step in a whole different direction because before mainstream media, like they may have touched on it, but it wasn’t a thing. Most of our recognition came from cannabis media or other types of plant medicine media. But I remember a couple years ago, Forbes ran my Thanksgiving recipes and Forbes for all cannabis infused, it was called Quarantine Thanksgiving, and that was like, “oh, well this is something because this is not the stoner demographic,” and that’s really hard for us to break through that.

Like the older lady who is just retired and is walking her dog in the park that has joint pain may not realize this is an option for her. Or the young college student who is an athlete and doesn’t want to take narcotics for their pain. This is an option for them. So we have a lot of different people we still have to reach to. And I think once we break that plane, we’ll have a lot more notoriety in being considered as this is actually a career that is helping someone, not just getting high, but also helping them be well.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Mm-hmm. I have to ask you about one other type of food, which is one of my favorites, which is sushi. And it’s interesting, there’s a Japanese restaurant I go to in San Francisco, and the guy who runs it, a Japanese American guy, he’s actually one of the few people I know who is basically consuming a 1000 milligrams of THC a day while leading a very active life. He’s just built up a very high tolerance and a friend, and I arranged for him actually to do a cannabis infused sushi dinner. But has this really started to show up in the sushi world at all.

Nikki Steward:

Yeah, I’ve had infused sushi. Mm-hmm. I did a collab with a sushi restaurant, and we did infuse sushi. And I mean, yeah, it’s great. There’s a couple different ways you can infuse sushi depending on what types of delivery methods, but if it’s in the rice, you can use a isolate, which is more of a powder THC substance that will disintegrate into the rice. Of course, you can put it in dipping sauces, but to actually infuse the sushi and also you can use it in the vinegar that you’ll use, like the rice vinegar, anything that you would use to cure the tuna or the salmon, anything like that. Yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Mm-hmm. So I’m just thinking in terms of, you’re saying you’re on the road all the time, you’re also saying you’re a mom and I’m wondering in terms of what lies ahead, I mean, is there going to be a cookbook or a TV show? Are you going to be branding even more broadly? So what lies ahead for you, you think? And what’s your vision of yourself for the next 5, 10, 20 years?

Nikki Steward:

I am working on a book right now and it’s going to be a very interesting book of a collection of memoirs like stories, recipes, and quite a bit of science and to breaking down how to use these things safely and referring back to them when you do the recipes in your kitchen. The High-End Affair is still going to be on tour, so you’ll still be able to catch us in most recreational and medical markets and some decriminalized markets. We are doing our first international event, so South Africa has just recently become legal.

And so we got an ask from a team there and a group to come do the High-End Affair in South Africa and to potentially launch a product and just kind of help them. We get a lot of ask from different places, my team and I, we go to different countries and we talk to different folks and individuals about how to regulate edibles and how to introduce this to your country as a legal form. Because some places legalize edibles and non combustible things first, like THC and CBD tinctures. So we’re doing a lot with kind of expanding into a global space.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Okay, Nikki, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you need connections to any place around the world. Because I’m sort of wired into that world everywhere really, who’s trying to integrate drug policy reform and cannabis reform with greater issues around social justice. But listen, I think what you’re doing is absolutely amazing. My mouth is absolutely watering right now. And I can’t wait till the day comes when I can actually partake of one of your dinners. Any plans to be in New York in 2022.

Nikki Steward:

So I actually do, that was a part, I was going to finish that off. So I’ll be coming to New York. I should be there 4/20 and so I will clue you in and send you the invitation for that.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Oh, that would be great.

Nikki Steward:

So I’ll be there. We’re going to be doing a lot more stuff in New York. I also work with Weedmaps a lot and so we’re one of their strategic partners when it comes to certain types of events and they kind of help me out with a lot of things. So we’re going to be doing more stuff in New York, so I’ll be excited about that. And probably around third, fourth quarter of this year with the rollout and the launch of the Chef Nikki products will be in dispensaries. So that’s coming.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Wow, sounds fantastic.

Nikki Steward:

Yeah.

Ethan Nadalmann:

Sounds fantastic. Sounds like you’re on a roll doing great stuff. Putting out a lot of positive food and energy and healing in the world. So listen, thank you ever so much for joining me on Psychoactive.

Nikki Steward:

Of course. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Ethan Nadalmann:

[inaudible 01:05:19].