Photo: Media Bakery

One of Denver's most notable new restaurants specializes in cuisine containing a certain ingredient that you need a doctor's permission to ingest. The ingredient is marijuana. The restaurant is Ganja Gourmet and the permission required is a medical marijuana card, which entitles the bearer to use the otherwise illegal herb due to a medical necessity. Colorado has a medical marijuana law that allows such activity.

Ganja Gourmet (slogan: “Our food is so great, you need a license to eat it!”) menus a series of dishes, from entrees (lasagna, pizza) to desserts (cheesecake, muffins, the obligatory brownies), all with marijuana as a key ingredient.

Business has been brisk since the eatery's mid-December opening, despite the statutorily limited customer base and prices that would put Manhattan to shame. For example, a whole pizza sells for $89 and there are no coupon specials tucked in the mail.

At those prices, you'll probably want to limit your indulgence, but not to worry. The staff won't try to upsell you.

In fact, Ganja Gourmet has a policy that limits dining room patrons to a single menu item every 45 minutes (you can take out as much as you want and the takeout end of the business is brisk). The reason: pot-laced food tends to creep up on you because THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical in marijuana that makes you high) takes much longer (up to two hours!) to enter the bloodsteam from the stomach than through the traditional inhalation method. The order limit prevents patrons unaware of that fact from overindulging in a vain attempt to get a high, and then getting hit with the accumulated dosage just as they're ready to drive home.

Also, just because they're potheads doesn't mean they want pot bellies to go with it…