How Chef Nikki Steward Became The Go-To For Celebrity Cannabis Dinners – Thrillist
Had you cooked for people outside your family at this point?
You know those Sunday dinners? I’d started bringing my sorority sisters home with me for those, too. But my grandma liked dinner earlier. So my sisters would come over every Sunday evening, after Grandma went to bed, and I’d have a new menu with special cocktails prepared. And then we’d watch the new episode of True Blood. Over time, all my friends were like, ‘You might want to consider taking this whole chef thing seriously.’
I started taking culinary classes, traveling across the country and other countries to do culinary study and work in different restaurants; learned different aesthetics and techniques. There’s something about food for me—it’s just my safe space. When I’m creating and cooking, it’s where I find my solace. If I’m able to make money doing this, that’s dope.
What brought about your shift from working in restaurants to your own event/catering operation?
I started getting asked to cater—just word of mouth. It really started with classmates at Ohio State. They put me on, and then word spread over the next few years. One of them went on to work for Snoop and work on Merry Jane, and she knew I made edibles for some celebrities when they traveled and hosted a few underground edible dinners. One day in 2017, she reached out about doing a dinner for Snoop, and I was thinking, like, 15-20 people. She hits me with 250.
Gasp! Cooking for just 15 people scares me.
She told me she had a budget of $10K, and I said yes. Nowadays, I would never do a 250-person event for that! But at that moment, this was huge for me. Then I connected with the other people involved, who handed me like seven pounds of flower. This was old-school style—just handing me the flower that I’d need to process and cook with. I knew that because of concentrate yield, I needed less than a half-pound. I was handing out ounces to friends like crazy.
That party was the first time I felt that pressure of everyone’s experience being my responsibility. It’s so different from working at a restaurant and handing out plates. I was responsible for everyone having a good time—all 250 of them. (Everyone did.) Some people got smashed, which I took note of to reflect in later calculations. But Snoop was like, ‘Girl, you killed that shit.’
Ok, but—what did you cook?!
I remember I did 8-10 courses: an arancini, some sort of chicken and waffle situation, a jerk jackfruit—which was interesting because of one of Bob Marley’s granddaughters was there, and she was like, ‘I’ve never had this like this before, this is outstanding!’
What would you say defines your style of infusing?
I don’t like for you to taste an overpowering taste of cannabis in my food. I want it to be enjoyable and seamless. I want the flavor palette to retain its harmony with the weed—there was initially a lot of trial and error, and I worked with friends who are food scientists and dieticians until I got things down. I time my courses according to how the cannabis will be digested: the sugar content, the level of savory, the form of the cannabis concentrate. There’s a lot of math when you do shit the right way. It’s chemistry. I tell people all the time how I think James Beard ought to have a category for cooking with cannabis, because this is more than molecular gastronomy.
I know I’m not supposed to fangirl. But I can’t deny losing it when I saw that you catered Dave Chappelle’s Summer Camp?
I’ve been crossing paths with Dave Chappelle for a while. Mind you—he lives in Ohio, in a little small hippie town, and I live in Ohio. His publicist first connected me way before the weed, but I was already doing craft services, back of the house, green room—things like that—so now, anything involving food, events, parties—I’m Dave’s girl.
What do you love most about creating these experiences?
Being able to define how I want my life to look and feel is really most important to me in regards to my daughters—showing them how to carve out their own destiny. I want them to know you don’t have to be held to a certain set of guidelines—do your own thing. If you do it right, people will pay you for it. I want to have an impact on this world, while maintaining being a humble and honest person. I always tell my kids, ‘Don’t forget, do not tell my grandbabies that I was a drug dealer. Explain this whole story to them!’