Toked Salmon and Stonerwiches: it all tastes good at this pot café
JOANNE KATES
Hot Box Café
191A Baldwin St., Toronto, 416-203-6990. Dinner for two with tax and tip, $30.
What is a restaurant critic doing covering a marijuana café? If a Kensington spot lets people smoke wacky tobaccy on its premises, that isn't my purview. Until they start serving food.
Which Hot Box Café definitely does. Actually, they don't do many things that definitely. For instance, it's never clear when they close. The website mentions summer hours ending at 8, 9 and 10 at night, depending on the day. Spring hours? When we call, they say they're open till 7 p.m., but good luck getting anything to eat at 6.
Me: "It says on the sign on your 'potio,' $2 minimum, one hour maximum. I'd like to give you some money. Can we order sandwiches and salads from the menu?"
Guy behind counter: "No, I'm closing the kitchen." I beg. He stands firm. "I'm cleaning up. No."
This makes me wonder about pothead hospitality. Where is that mellow attitude where he doesn't care what time it is, and sure he'll throw together a few yummy sandwiches. After all, the big sign over the kitchen says, "Munchies." They know their clientele. At least, they know the effect that their particular ambience is going to have on them.
Then again, this is a hotbox with rules (as elucidated both in signage and at http://www.roachorama.com ). Anyone over 18 may smoke his or her own pakalolo (as the Hawaiians call it). There is to be neither dealing nor mooching. And all dogs must be well behaved and on a short leash. Add the aforementioned minimum purchase and maximum stay, and Toronto's first pot café is a straightforward place. They invite you to either visit the potio to smoke weed, or to ask for your own plastic tube for inhaling through a vaporizer (one at every table). Although the vaporizer's health benefits are clear (it filters out the smoke while delivering the THC), one wonders just how they sterilize plastic tubing to make it safe for reuse. Fuddy-duddy boomers may be too old for these high jinks.
The potio, while not a warm place (none of those uptown fancy gas heating towers for this joint), is funky, as expected. There are plastic chairs in almost as many colours as the accompanying murals, and a forgotten garden (with abandoned tools and a knocked-over pot of dead something) gives living proof to the motto on Roach-O-Rama's logo: "Serving potheads since ah, I forget."
Roach-O-Rama is the head shop that shares space with Hot Box. They sell "potty pants" -- briefs with a marijuana leaf you know where. They also have hemp flying discs, promoted with a hand-lettered sign reading, "Yah, they fly." Someone asks the woman behind the counter what the music is. "I don't know," she says with a snarl. "I don't pay any attention to the music." It's kind of sad to find that servers in a pot café are no more laid-back, affable or helpful than anywhere else.
But we like the room. The café is, aesthetically, exactly what one expects. Walls are painted in large mindless blocks of many different and bright colours. Banquettes are bright aqua with a swath of coral down the middle. There is a large blackboard opposite the counter, with the specials listed beside a huge blank space. We inquire as to the possibility of using up some of that space: Power to the people, we're thinking. But Mr. Nice Guy behind the counter says no. Patrons are not to chalk on the blackboard.
It is thus unsurprising that, when we finally get our hands on it, we are not predisposed to like the food. But the food, although determinedly downmarket, is surprisingly taste-bud friendly.
They could probably serve anything, after what their patrons have been smoking. But they do food very nicely. Both language and kitchen are inhabited with a certain aesthetic know-how. For example, on the menu under Wake and Bake, they list various breakfast foods, served till 2 p.m. There is Oy Veh Toked Salmon (a.k.a. smoked), Blunted Brie Stonerwich, and the injunction, in the combo-plate section, Don't Bogart Those Platters.
The sandwiches are quite delightful despite being called Stonerwiches (not the best image in the Hot Box lexicon). All the sandwiches are heated and pressed using every young adult's best cooking friend, the panini press, which makes amateurs look like pros.
The Red Hempress sandwich, of pesto, peppers, chèvre and sprouts, is fabulous -- garlicky heaven with fragrant pesto and good sharp chèvre. Blunted Brie with avocado and sprouts is a triumph of hippie cuisine (one of the few). The salads are designer greens. Caesar dressing is both creamy and piquant, but beware the stale store-bought croutons. Perhaps our friends behind the counter forgot to make their own?
We wonder if they were on something when they concocted the berry and sweet onion dressings, for they seem to be evidence that they should a) consult someone unimpaired before putting items on the menu, or b] never design recipes when they have the munchies. The berry dressing is hot pink, a colour (and cloyingly sweet flavour) that might have suited Janis Joplin, but does nothing for my salad. The flavour is cloying. Sweet onion dressing is radioactive yellow and even sweeter than the berry one.
Maybe they were too busy getting ready for April Fool's Day, or the global marijuana march on April 20. As it says on their website: "Come celebrate stoner new year at the Hot Box. Party will be going all day until 10 p.m.!!! DJs, games, cake and stoners from all over town. It should be a rocking joint."
What a surprise, the Hot Box makes fun cookies. Dark chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips are soft and scrumptious, but regular chocolate chip cookies (also soft and yummy) are decorated with multicoloured M&M's. Psychedelic!
I am not sure wjether the conservative govt. -that is, Harper and his minders- understands that what is being done, and what's YET to come, will do nothing but move Paris into Toronto. Big time.
Police crack down on marijuana users Tories reverse Liberal pot policy Police chiefs welcome tough stance Apr. 3, 2006. 08:10 AM PETER EDWARDS STAFF REPORTER
Brian Fitzpatrick has openly used marijuana for years to control his epilepsy, and police have never bothered him. All that has changed. Police forces across the GTA, taking their cue from the new federal Conservative government, are again cracking down on the simple possession of marijuana. Before the Liberals lost the January election, legislation was in the works to make possession of small amounts of pot a minor offence, much like a parking ticket. That prompted police forces to ease up on marijuana users. But things are different today, and Fitzpatrick, 39, of Ajax, is caught in the middle. York University law professor Alan Young says such pot busts have increased over the past months, with word that the Conservative government won't resurrect Liberal efforts to decriminalize simple possession of marijuana. Fitzpatrick's legal problems began March 26, as he felt a seizure coming on. He called an ambulance, and began self-medicating with cannabis-based butter. Ambulance workers at his home noticed the potent butter, called police, and soon Fitzpatrick's cannabis stock was gone and he was looking for a lawyer. The former Liberal government talked of decriminalizing possession of small amounts of pot, treating possession of less than 15 grams of pot as a minor offence punishable by fines of $100 to $400. "I seem to be getting more calls from people who've been arrested for simple possession," Young said. "They're (police) trying to flex their muscles and say the law's still vibrant," Young said. Peel criminal lawyer Gary Batasar agreed that police seem to be taking a get-tough approach to all pot crimes, including simple possession. "There's no doubt that they're not being let off with too much," Batasar said. Their comments this week came three weeks after a spokesman for Justice Minister Vic Toews announced that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Tories have no plans to loosen marijuana laws. "It's a green light for police to go ahead with stricter law enforcement, if they so want," Young said. "They're doing it with much more vigour than before, no doubt about it." "They're charging more people and they're more proactive on the grow-ops," Young continued. "They've done a real campaign to show grow-ops as the 11th Biblical plague." Toews' spokesman, Mike Storeshaw, said earlier this month it was clear during the election race that the party had no intention of moving forward on the decriminalization bill. Meanwhile, local police chiefs say they were against decriminalization of marijuana before the Tories took power, and they feel the same way now. "I don't anticipate that our organization will change its approach," said York Regional Police Chief Armand La Barge.
`They're (police) trying to flex their muscles and say the law's still vibrant.' Alan Young, York U. law professor
"We continue to enforce it ... Our approach has been consistent throughout." La Barge said he welcomed the announcement from Toews' office that simple possession won't be decriminalized in the new future. "That's something that I was particularly happy to hear." La Barge said relaxing drug laws sends the wrong message to the public, and that York police have been "waging a war" for some time against marijuana grow operations in houses, run by organized crime groups. Marijuana grown in York Region, in "nice suburban homes," is routinely exported to the U.S. and swapped for guns and other drugs, La Barge said. "They are multi-million-dollar criminal operations," La Barge said. Durham police Chief Vernon White said he doubts any police chief in the country wants youths to have criminal records for a first case of possession of a small amount of marijuana. Most convictions for possession of marijuana today began with charges of possession for the purposes of trafficking, and then were reduced because of a guilty plea, White said. "The reality is very few people these days are charged with simple possession of marijuana," White said. However, he said that many adults don't realize that pot today is often up to six times more potent than during the 1970s and early 1980s. "It's not the same drug that's around today as in 1980," White said, adding that there's a disturbing new practice on the West Coast of spraying marijuana with highly potent and addictive crystal meth. Toronto pot activist Mark Stupak said he and fellow marijuana activists are in a daze about what's going on with enforcement of pot laws, after the federal government change. "Everybody's confused, basically," he said. Stupak said police seem to be clamping down on marijuana seed operations, noting the bust of the Heaven's Stairway company in Ottawa, which has operated openly since 1998 and is listed on Quebec's business registry. Heaven's Stairway sold marijuana seeds over the Internet, and until recently, seed distributors have functioned in a "cloud of legality," Stupak said, but that seems to be changing. On the West Coast, Marc Emery, described as the "King of Pot" and founder of the B.C. Marijuana Party, is battling extradition — and the threat of decades in prison — for charges of conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana seeds and to engage in money laundering. In the Toronto area, marijuana activists say many local seed sellers have stopped shipping to the United States, for fear of being charged like Emery. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald said he has lost his appetite, as he worries about more epileptic seizures, the loss of his pot and the stress of his court case on May 5. "I've never felt this way before in my life," Fitzpatrick says. With files from The Star's Tonda MacCharles
Roses are red violets are korny, when I think of you Ohh baby I get horny...
