America's Best Edibles: Your Definitive Guide
Wyld, Rose, Off Hours, Sundae School, Cann, Flyers, Lost Farm, Mesobis, and others earn spots on "The Hi 21"
Hey Friends!
Welcome to The Hi 21, our guide to America’s best edibles. Let’s eat well and chill TF out. We all need a break right now.
My column is the result of purchasing nearly 50 different gummies and drinks in NYC, Denver, Portland, and Los Angeles. This guide is paywalled, but to help you save, I’m extending my winter discount for a few more days!
First, a little Sutton Story…
In October 2007, this young restaurant critic had his first edible.
It did not go well.
I was hanging out at a house party in Park Slope. And my buddy was handing out pot cookies. This was the sort of thing people did before it was legal to sell designer edibles out of chic boutiques on the Bowery.
I was 28, a late starter. Like so many other “international affairs” grads, I was planning to join the foreign policy community, and if you were gonna work for Uncle Sam, you had to play by his rules. Weed testing was an inevitability.
Until it wasn’t.
When I became a critic — a better meal plan than the government cafeteria — cannabis came back on the menu. And so on that particular autumn night, I ate a small piece of my buddy’s pot cookie. And then, I had another. And then I had a third. And maybe a fourth?
“Man, what are you doing?,” my friend said to me.
I didn’t get why he was rationing out those little bites. I imagined he was breaking them off from a larger Mother Cookie, something the circumference of a small softball, in the vein of Mrs. Fields. So I had more!
Reader: There was no larger cookie. Those tiny pieces were the cookies.
As I left, my friend put his arm around me and uttered a line I’d never forget.
“Ryan, you have fifteen good minutes left. Enjoy them.”
I won’t get into what I experienced fifteen minutes later. Or seven hours later. I watched the sun come up as I clung onto my sanity — with a bottle of Venezuelan rum.
It would be 12 years before I had an edible again. But when I did, it was glorious. I tried it out with that same buddy at an old Italian joint, a place where cops and firefighters used to go for a night out. We drank a lot of wine and we laughed a lot.
The story reminds me of that old food critic’s rule. Don’t give something a bad review after a single visit — especially when everything is your own fault anyway!
I really like edibles.
I love how they make me crave hot slice pizza and cold vanilla ice cream. I love how they help me focus on what’s in front of me — rather than what’s on my phone — during a long tasting menu.
I love how they make me laugh.
But there’s a larger story going on here. Recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states, with more to come. And a loophole in the farm bill has created a boom in hemp gummies, with fancy purveyors like Rose and Sundae School shipping them off to prohibition states like Texas and Florida.
Globally, this is already a $12 billion industry. And there’s a whole lot of edibles to choose from. So I put together a list of my favorites. Enjoy!
Behind the Paywall: The Hi 21, America’s Best Edibles
Scroll down for…
Notes on microdosing
Super tasty Korean American mochi edibles
The best edible collaborations with cool chefs
My fave gummies for nighttime chilling and snacking
The best mail-order gummies: from affordable to luxe
Delicious creamsicle sodas and vanilla colas with THC!