- Lowell Cafe in Los Angeles is the first full-service cannabis cafe in America where you can smoke to your heart’s content with other like-minded stoners
- SCMP reporter Charley Lanyon went to sample the extensive cannabis menu and found that it’s not all giggles living the high life – at least at his age
You smell the cafe blocks before you reach it. While the scent of marijuana smoke is ubiquitous in Los Angeles, walking up to Lowell Cafe " "America's Original Cannabis Cafe" " feels like approaching an especially pungent forest fire.
On the street outside you first encounter a doorman who checks your name against a list, a bouncer who asks for your ID, then you walk through a gravel car park full of Teslas.
Finally, the host ushers you inside and welcomes you to the United States' first cannabis cafe. Everyone turns and smiles as you walk in, then they turn back but keep smiling. They are always smiling. They even smile as they chew.
In the United States, marijuana is here to stay. On both sides of the aisle, in blue states and red, Americans love their weed. If they don't get high themselves, they love the tax revenue pot sales generate.
Today, the country is a patchwork of often conflicting national and state laws. The District of Columbia and 11 states have legalised pot outright, while others have decriminalised it. Some have legalised it for medical consumption and most agree it is just a matter of time before the rest follow.
Even in states where it is legal, laws are confusing. In California, where weed was legalised for recreational use in 2016, pot stores are everywhere but some can only sell to "patients" with a special medical card, while others serve anybody over 21 years of age. It is illegal to consume the product on the premises, except in lounges where you can smoke, and the sale of food and beverages is strictly prohibited.
That all changed in October, when Lowell Cafe opened in West Hollywood. The first full-service pot cafe in America, Lowell's promised a place where you can eat, drink (non-alcoholic beverages) and smoke to your heart's content with other like-minded stoners.
Lowell Farms, the brand behind the cafe, is best known for its packs of pre-rolled joints and has made a name for the quality of its product, its singular branding " the logo is a conservative-looking bull in a waistcoat " and the loyalty it has inspired among celebrities including Chris Rock, Miley Cyrus and Sarah Silverman (who are also investors). Its claim to being the only pot cafe in the country won't last long, as another eight cannabis cafes are slated to open in West Hollywood in as many months.
Lowell's decor is everything that is trendy in Los Angeles today, sort of "health food restaurant chic". It is a lovely restaurant with lots of indoor plants, woodsy but sophisticated, exuding a self-conscious wellness vibe that does a good job obscuring the fact that everybody here has come for the same reason: to get blasted.
The bathroom is papered with pictures of celebrities smoking pot. There's Rihanna and Snoop Dogg and Bob Marley and Bob Marley again and Snoop Dogg… On my visit, the wallpaper was an especially nice touch, as it gave me something to look at as the very high man in front of me at the sink took his time washing his hands, marvelling at the soap bubbles.
The restaurant is perennially packed, especially the outdoor patio area where the staff limit each guest's stay to only 90 minutes. The crowd is self-consciously Los Angeles, almost a parody: all bared midriffs, teddy bear coats, unisex clogs and unsettling haircuts.
Large clouds of bluish smoke rolled constantly around the tables, giving the whole thing a kind of "influencers in the mist" vibe.
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I picked out my dining companion in the haze, waving to me from a cosy two-top in the shade of a welcoming oak. Diego is a good friend who works in the cannabis industry and was there to show me the ropes " and to carry me to bed if I was over-served.
That I would need any help at all would have been a great source of shame to me when I was 19.
Until the age of 21, I had dreadlocks down below my waist, lived exclusively in tattered pyjama pants, and had a pierced septum through which I proudly wore " on festive occasions " a raccoon penis bone. I would also smoke copious amounts of marijuana, as much as I could get in me from morning until falling into a dreamless sleep every night for more than half a decade.
Things have changed, and while I am still an occasional smoker, I've become the guy at the weed store sheepishly inquiring if they have something "not too strong" " what pot heads derisively call "dad weed".
The food on offer at Lovell is all stoner-friendly fare, such as "Animal Style" corn dogs served with bacon, deep-fried jalapeno mac 'n' chees bites, and fried chicken sandwiches alongside a selection of salads and vegan bites lest you forget where you are.
The cannabis menu is much more extensive. There are pre-rolled joints, flowers " cannabis buds unadorned " as well as THC oil vape cartridges in flavours such as crEme brUlee, sundae, and AK-47, edibles, and infusions of all kinds. For expert-level smokers, there are concentrates: waxes and oils somewhat akin to hash but with eyeball-shrivelling potency and requiring special techniques and equipment to smoke. I steered clear.
There are two types of waiters " one for food, and a "flower host" for marijuana " but we were approached by a veritable parade of confused, unfailingly nice staff, each surprised that we had already been served. Often they carried with them dishes we hadn't ordered or which we had just finished. Under the circumstances, we accepted and ate them all.
Diego was very excited to see that "LA Kush Blue Box" was on the menu, a thumb-sized, pre-rolled conical joint full of what he assured me was some of the strongest and most sought-after bud in the country.
We ordered one "to start" and though I had been looking forward to presenting the South China Morning Post my expenses for a diverse apothecary of marijuana, I became so quickly and so profoundly deranged from the first few puffs that any more was out of the question.
Half an hour of giggling good cheer gave way to a deep silence in which I considered the facts, now clear as day: that I was an impostor at my job, that my girlfriend couldn't possibly love me as much as I loved her, that I was gaining weight at an alarming rate, and that I would, before I knew it, be dead. I became a self-conscious cliche staringand smiling that sort of smile that only means one thing: emergency.
Diego, bless him, wasn't too hard on me about my low tolerance. His edible was working handily now and he had stopped making very clear sense on the rare occasions he spoke.
Whoever managed the restaurant's workflow was evidently also in charge of the music. In an era when music is determined by algorithm, it was jarring to hear songs follow each other with so little internal logic: Kraftwerk, something that sounded like Joan Baez singing under a pond, Frank Sinatra, the Eurythmics. The diners didn't seem to mind, and Diego said that the soundtrack was taking him on "a journey".
It occurred to me then that selling pot was the perfect salve for the growing pains of a new restaurant. High people necessarily find meaning in everything. What doesn't vibe with their experiences (botched orders for example, or being out of juice " a very serious sin in Los Angeles) could be passed off as a kind of stoner joke: "Whoa, they must be as high as we are!"
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This impression was reinforced when the food arrived. It was … not good. They had just opened so I will leave it at that.
Food quality aside, don't think for a moment that we didn't order seconds and even thirds. Diners at Lowell are, by necessity, voracious and undiscerning. I began to think that the kitchen was not running out of its stocks due to poor planning, but because they had taken on a mathematically impossible task. How much juice should you buy when your customer can consume infinite amounts of it?
Of course there was the 90-minute time limit " given a strong enough bag of weed, and a bottomless supply of corn dogs, diners might actually never leave.
Still, there was something obviously missing at Lowell and it took me a while to figure out what it was: the booze. I might not need alcohol to have a good time, but a restaurant definitely does. Marijuana is just not fun at parties.
I watched crowds of giddy customers take their seats, laughing and carrying on until the pot got the better of them and they would trail off and silently stare at their food.
Also, the experience just didn't feel that special.
While the cafe's website proudly proclaims "the end of prohibition is here", the truth is obvious: public pot smoking has long been a touchstone of California culture. In the years before Lowell Cafe, there were plenty of outdoor restaurants, bar back patios and poolside cabanas where you could smoke without raising any eyebrows, unless, of course, what you were smoking was a cigarette, then God protect you.
Still, the setting wouldn't be nearly as pleasant and there wouldn't be anyone to bring you your own handmade clay water pipe or teach you which bud goes best with your entree.
Mostly, what Lowell Cafe taught me is that I am getting old. I can't tell you how long we stayed at the cafe, though I doubt we came near to reaching our allotted 90 minutes. After leaving we availed ourselves of a Persian ice cream parlour down the street where I single-mindedly worked my way through a serving of date-flavoured ice cream so big that it could have been served in a traffic cone.
The next morning I woke up on the couch, some Spider-Man movie still playing on the TV. This time, there would be no hangover, no questionable choices to re-evaluate, no queasy feeling from that unwise last bottle of wine, or too much rich and buttery restaurant cooking. No lurid behaviour to regret, sure, but nothing much to speak of at all.
If I were an entirely different person, I could have even made it to yoga class.
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