I ate a four-course meal at a weed pizza parlor and got stoned to the bone

Walking into Stoned Gourmet Cannabis Pizza, I got the impression I was entering a stoner's speakeasy.

I was greeted with the sweet smell of marijuana and the pumping bass of a Snoop Dogg song the moment I stepped in. The restaurant was pretty full for a weeknight, and towards the back of the space, a group of guys were passing around a pre-dinner blunt.

At Stoned — located "somewhere in the East Village" in New York City — diners are welcome to bring their own joints and blunts to accompany their meal. But you don't need to BYOW to get buzzed: every food item on the menu contains a generous helping of THC, the cannabis compound that induces a high.

Although New York adults can now legally consume cannabis however they please, weed sales are still illegal and won't formally kick off until mid-to-late 2022.

That's not stopping Chris Barrett, chef of Stoned. "The Pizza Pusha" has been serving weed-infused pies since 2017, first at private events and now with pickup and delivery options.

The East Village location has been open since September 2020. On the day of my reservation, I got a text with an address and instructions for getting in: "You'll know you've arrived when you see a wall of hearts."

If you want to dine at the restaurant, you'll be served a set four-course, $100 meal that contains upwards of 400mg of THC.

For context, a modern joint contains between 60 to 150 mg of THC or more, according to Weedmaps. However, edibles may affect people differently because they're absorbed via the liver.

I'm glad I looked up the menu ahead of time, because the servers didn't mention how much THC was in each individual dish.

Even as an experienced cannabis user, I thought the dosage sounded extremely high, so I did some mental math and planned to sample about a quarter of each course.

Be prepared to leave some food on your plate — or to get really, really high.

We started with some drinks, aptly called Stoned Sodas. Each drink contained approximately 30 milligrams of THC, which would have been plenty on its own.

The beverages, which ranged from Canna Cola to Orange Kush, are known to absorb quicker into the bloodstream compared to most infused foods.

"If you want to get high quicker, the drinks are the way to go," our server told us.

My black cherry lemonade was refreshing and didn't taste like weed at all — the only herb I tasted was a hint of mint.

The first course was a plate of "ganja knots," which were deliciously doughy and topped with pesto and parmesan cheese.

As tasty as the knots were, my first thought when I saw the plate was, "How are we supposed to finish these?"

It was definitely too much weed for two people — a plate of six garlic knots contained 100mg of THC, and that was just the first appetizer.

For reference, most cannabis edibles I've tried in the past were dosed at between 5 and 25 mg. In my experience, 5 mg is a nice dose for a day out and 25 mg usually makes me feel too sleepy to socialize.

My sister and I decided to start with a single knot each to pace ourselves. But as the THC from the lemonades started to kick in, it was hard to resist going for seconds.

Just as I was nibbling on another ganja knot, our "sticky icky wings" arrived.

My first bite of the wings was all batter and barbecue sauce — and I mean that in the best way. Paired with a creamy dipping sauce, the wings had just the right amount of spicy zing. They were dosed at 25 mg of THC a piece, which was a bit more than the knots.

None of it tasted like weed at all, so I had to remind myself what I was consuming.

At this point, I asked for a glass of water. As tasty as the infused drinks were, I wanted to sip on something that didn't contain any THC.

I also took some mirror selfies in the bathroom, which was decorated with some plants and abstract art.

After eating a wing and a knot and a half each, we got our pizza.

The four-slice sampler really took the dosing to new heights. Each slice — sausage, cheese, veggie, and pepperoni — contained a whopping 40 mg of THC.

I'm not a huge fan of meat on pizza, so I sampled everything but the sausage. The pizza was tasty, with a fluffy crust, but even taking a small bite of each slice felt dangerous.

As I watched a server clear six hardly touched plates from the table next to us, I wondered aloud if anyone ever finished an entire meal at Stoned. He told me the restaurant ends up throwing out a lot of food, but some people go all in.

"One time I ate it all and it was good," he said with a shrug. "I survived."

The meal seemed to follow an upward arc: each course contained a greater amount of THC than the last.

I asked our server if the food was infused with any other cannabinoids, like CBD, to balance out the psychoactive effect. But they said the dishes were made with distillate, a potent extract that contains solely THC.

They couldn't tell me what elements of each course contained weed, so I was left wondering if double-dipping my wings was a bad idea.

By the time dessert came around, I was bobbing my head to the music and giggling at my sister's progressively terrible storytelling.

The dessert course included a sampler of infused gelato, a "canna cannoli," and half of a giant cream puff. At this point, we were too stoned to care about the dosage — after all, the full effects wouldn't hit us until we got back to my apartment.

The chocolate gelato was the only thing that tasted like it might have weed in it. It had a slight chemical aftertaste, but I liked it better than the artificial cotton candy flavor. The coconut and cookies & cream were the best scoops out of the bunch.

However, nothing compared to the canna cannoli, which was the best thing I ate all night by far. Topped with a generous helping of chocolate chips and powdered sugar, it tasted just like a cannoli from Boston's North End.

"I think I might need to finish this cannoli," I told my sister, my face covered in powdered sugar.

And indeed, I ate an entire 60 mg cannoli, bringing my total to around 150 mg.

I expected to be way too stoned to walk home, but my sister and I rode a pleasant high all the way back to my apartment, where we ended the night with some non-infused munchies and a couple episodes of Survivor.

While I wouldn't recommend Stoned to less experienced dabblers, the restaurant offers cannabis aficionados a glimpse of the future of legal weed in New York.