Denver Cannabis Chef Takes on Bobby Flay, Without the Weed
Westword Magazine July 22, 2022
Colorado chef Jarod "Roilty" Farina's reputation will be on the line in an upcoming episode of the Food Network's Beat Bobby Flay, but he'll have to compete without a key part of his cooking arsenal.
Farina doesn't own a restaurant: He runs a private catering and dinner service that specializes in multi-course meals infused with cannabis. Although the South Florida native couldn't use cannabis in his dishes during the recent Food Network filming, it wasn't something he'd shied away from during the audition process.
"I signed up for it and got lucky. You put yourself out there and hope for the best," he says. "They liked the fact that we did a fine-dining element with cannabis, and I hope it's represented in the show. We'll see how they edit it."
If there's anything that rivals Farina's drive for cooking with cannabis, it's cooking with eyeballs on him. A veteran of Chopped 420 on Discovery Plus and Bravo's Southern Charm, he's well aware of what television and media can do for his business. But even without the hype, he says, he'd gravitate toward cooking under pressure in a competition.
"You don't know what [ingredients] you're going to get ahead of time, so you have to be quick with it. It's not something that's cut out for everybody," Farina explains. "It's more about being competitive and in these situations again. That kind of stuff appeals to me."
Farina's infused catering service, Dine With Roilty, cooks and infuses dishes right in front of the guests — and actually, Roilty is the invited guest. Customers book Dining With Roilty for dinners and events, and then Farina and his crew show up at their homes to whip up a meal. In order to stay within Colorado's confusing cannabis business laws, Farina asks that the customer provide the cannabis concentrate for a pre-approved menu, and then he infuses the dishes tableside.
The "canna-leaf pasta experience" is the current star of Farina's menu.
"We take fresh pasta, roll it out with fresh cannabis leaves inside the sheets, cut those sheets into fettuccini and put it in garlic and herb sauce. Then we serve it atop a pillow of cannabis smoke and grate fresh cannabis on top of it, too," he details. "It just tastes like another herb inside of it."