Chef David Anthony Temple uses a torch to sear sous vide Kobe beef that's been spritzed with a tincture made of Everclear and White Widow, a strain of marijuana, at an underground cannabis dinner recently held in Dallas.

At the table next to me, two sharply dressed 60-something married couples are on a double date, the ladies wearing fine jewelry, sipping a nice Chardonnay and laughing a little louder after every glass. Once the second course has been cleared from the table, I take a seat and introduce myself.

"I'm a doctor," a stately gentleman with a thick accent says, "and he's an ER doctor," he says, pointing to the man sitting next to him. The ER doctor reaches out to shake my hand, and two courses in, I can see a faint pinkness in the whites of his eyes. "Nice to meet you," he says. "Do you have any Cheetos?"

Throughout our brief conversation, the doctor repeats his Cheetos joke two more times, each quip eliciting more laughs than the last. That's how it goes when you're stoned, and the 20 diners gathered for a four-course meal in a quiet Dallas neighborhood are indeed quite stoned, despite the fact that nary a joint or bowl has been lit. These friendly, put-together folks are not exactly the sort I was expecting to run into at an underground cannabis dinner, but then again, given the frightening state of Texas marijuana law, I never expected to be at an underground cannabis dinner in Dallas in the first place.

Sous vide Kobe sashimi with beet puree and a salad spritzed with a tincture made of Everclear and a strain of cannabis called White Widow; lobster pho with green tea noodles and a bold, fragrant broth cooked with marijuana resin; a brownie drizzled in pungently herbaceous caramel made with another variety of marijuana called AK-47. According to the chef, after all four courses, each diner will consume an estimated 7 milligrams of THC. In comparison, a smoker indulging in an average-sized joint will take in approximately 17 milligrams to 21 milligrams of THC.

The diners range in age from late 20s to late 60s, a mixed bag that runs the gamut from a young couple on a date to a group of 20-somethings sipping beer to a middle-aged married couple and the giggly table of 60-somethings. The room doesn't smell like weed; no one is smoking anything or staring blankly off into space in a cannabis haze. The servers are attentive and well trained, their experience in fine dining readily apparent. Had strangers happened upon this gathering, they would have had no idea, until hearing the chef speak between courses, that this quiet dinner party is feasting on course after course of marijuana-infused food.

It is an exceedingly normal, relaxed pop-up dinner — one that just happens to provide an illegal substance that, if he were caught serving it, could send the chef to prison for the rest of his life.

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In the first three courses, there is no noticeable cannabis flavor; it isn't until dessert, a brownie drizzled in cannabis caramel, that the taste of marijuana entered the meal, and the rich, sweet caramel is deliciously bright and herbal, nothing like the bitter weed brownies once considered the benchmark for edibles.

Potency, the kind and amount of food it's delivered in and how the THC is extracted all determine how long it takes to feel the effects of eaten cannabis, according to The Cannabist, the Denver Post's marijuana blog. After just one course — the opening Kobe beef and salad, both spritzed with a THC tincture — I'm characteristically warm and relaxed, my eyeballs feeling almost like they're floating in my skull. When I look in the mirror halfway through dinner, I look like a classic TV sitcom stoner: with red, squinty, watery eyes like those I soon spot all around the room, including on the older woman sitting across from me. She tells stories of weed-infused vacations and parties where she exposed curious friends to cannabis for the first time.

EXPAND The first course of the evening, a beet puree with a tincture-kissed farmer's market salad and sous vide Kobe beef seared with the tincture sprayed on top. Beth Rankin

"It just makes for such a lovely evening," she says between sips of Chardonnay. "It's so relaxed. We just laugh and laugh."

For these sweet couples, a cannabis dinner differs little from a wine pairing dinner; it's just another excuse to get together, sample gourmet food and meet new people.

And that sense of normality, says chef David Anthony Temple, is why he decided to host a fine dining cannabis pop-up in a state that has some of the harshest marijuana laws in the country.

"Marijuana has been used in food for a long time," Temple says. "It's not something that I or anybody else invented."

Temple, who helped lead the underground dinner movement in Dallas after hosting his first pop-up in 2009, is a regular user of marijuana, both recreationally and, though it's not legal for this purpose in Texas, medically. He's prescribed medication like Xanax, he says, and he'd rather not be.

"I have severe anxiety, and this takes my anxiety away," he says. "I don't take [anxiety medication] if I can smoke."

"I just went in with that normal mentality. I just wanted people to be chill about it." Facebook

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When Temple, known around town as Chef DAT, decided to host a cannabis dinner, he chose to treat it exactly like the dozens of underground dinners he's hosted in the past. On Thursday, two days before the dinner, he sent an email to the 6,500-person list he's always used to announce his dinners.

"This is a very special and niche Saturday night," he wrote, noting that the dinner's theme was "Colorado edibles." Interested diners could email him back to reserve seats at the dinner, which, like most every underground dinner, had a suggested donation ($85, in this case) rather than a determined price. As he did for his other dinners, he sent out an email the day-of announcing the location. The only differences in this email were a request for diners to use Uber or Lyft, a rule against social media posts during the dinner (though photos were allowed) and a note that "THC will be in every course; please alert me if this is not up your alley." Only one person begrudgingly opts not to consume THC because of work-related drug testing, so Temple cooks him a THC-free meal "just like when somebody is gluten free," he says. When diners arrive at the start of the night, the only subtle hint of what was to come is the Sublime and Bob Marley playing quietly in the background.