Grilling the Chef: Three Questions for Milkweed Confections Chef-Owner Andrew LeStourgeon 

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• Milkweed Confections gummies

In the early 2000s, Andrew LeStourgeon was studying forensic psychology in New York City when he decided he was much more interested in the restaurant work he'd always done to make money.

"I realized that's what I wanted to do for a living," LeStourgeon, now 40, recalled. "You can take eggs, cream and sugar and, four hours later, hand somebody an ice cream cone for immediate enjoyment."

LeStourgeon started out unpaid in the pastry kitchen of Balthazar, the noted brasserie in SoHo. He worked his way up to become a pastry cook at Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Perry St. restaurant and, ultimately, executive pastry chef for the national Fig & Olive group. In 2012, he moved to Vermont, where he landed the pastry chef job at the original Waterbury Hen of the Wood.

As a side project, LeStourgeon began creating cannabis edibles under the brand Little Sweets by Hen of the Wood for the Vermont Patients Alliance, the state's first medical dispensary.

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• Andrew LeStourgeon

With the backing of Third Place, a Burlington-based strategy and funding partner for food and beverage entrepreneurs, LeStourgeon left Hen in 2016 to open Monarch & the Milkweed, a small restaurant and cocktail bar on St. Paul Street in Burlington.

The promise of a legal cannabis market floated on the horizon like a beguiling cloud of bong smoke — and the business' name hinted at things to come.

About a year later, LeStourgeon started selling CBD truffles such as Evergreen Bud, flavored with pine, honey and menthol, at Monarch and a few other Vermont stores.

In late 2022, he stepped away from the bar — which rebranded as Devil Takes a Holiday — to focus on Milkweed Confections. In May, Milkweed partnered with a licensed Massachusetts manufacturer to launch a trial in that state of two chocolate bars: milk chocolate caramel crunch, and yuzu and Tahitian vanilla. Each contains 100 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive component found in cannabis plants.

Around the end of September, Milkweed Confections containing THC will finally be available in Vermont when the company starts selling four flavors of gummies through state-licensed retailers. The butterfly-shaped gummies each contain five milligrams of THC and were developed in partnership with Vermont-licensed manufacturer Kria Commons in Colchester. A box of 10 will cost about $30; a box of 20, about $50.

Seven Days and LeStourgeon discussed how cocktails inspired his gummies and how Milkweed deploys a range of cannabinoids in cannabis — from the well-known THC to the less familiar cannabinol (CBN) and cannabigerol (CBG). The chef said he still finds it "selfishly rewarding" to create treats that "make other people happy."

How does your background as a chef and bar owner influence Milkweed?

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Everything is about the right sugars and the right acids and the right textures. Like, we've incorporated some large-grained organic sugar as well as honey granules for the coatings, visible vanilla bean seeds and raw Vermont honey — all of which produce a [gummy] that's hopefully better than competitors'. And they're pectin-based, not gelatin, just like the pâte de fruit I used to make at Hen and at Monarch.

They're designed after cocktails from our cocktail bar. You've got Bee's Knees — that's lemon, honey, juniper and a little bit of lavender coated in honey granules. And Kettlebell is named after the most famous original cocktail born out of Monarch by bar manager Eddie DiDonato. It's grapefruit, lemon and orange, honey and juniper. Moon Boots is another cocktail by Eddie. It has gardenia, Tahitian vanilla bean, lemon and juniper.

The Monarch was designed by Kate Malmstrom for the bar with fresh pineapple juice, chartreuse, tequila and cinnamon. The gummy has pineapple juice and bromelain, an enzyme found only in pineapples; agave; cinnamon; a little lemon — and the natural cannabis terpenes move into the chartreuse spot.

It sounds like you took cocktail recipes and kind of subbed in cannabis for some of the flavors and effects of alcohol?

Milkweed is a brand that I've designed to embrace those flavors [of cannabis] as opposed to reject them or cover them up. All the gummies have the slight bitter notes of the cannabis terpenes. We've learned how to use them to our advantage.

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• Milkweed Confections gummies

The cannabis is all organic, from a farm in the Northeast Kingdom. For Monarch and Kettlebell, we're using live rosin, which includes all the terpenes and cannabinoids in a particular strain of cannabis flash frozen and then processed immediately. They're full spectrum and have an assortment of cannabinoids, but mainly each features five milligrams of THC.

Kind of like alcohol, each person reacts differently to the cannabinoids. In generally predictable terms, the live rosin we're using produces a well-rounded sort of cloudy, soft, pillowy, marshmallowy effect — I don't want to say "high."

Then, for Moon Boots, we use five milligrams THC with five milligrams of CBN and five milligrams of CBG. That's our anti-anxiety, sleepy gummy. Bee's Knees has five milligrams THC and five milligrams CBG, so it's relaxing but not sleepy.

Here's the thing I still don't get: If I love a cocktail but I don't want to drink more alcohol, I can probably order a virgin version. But with these delicious-sounding gummies, I can only get a THC version, right? So I'm just going to be sad that I can only eat one at a time.

Right, I'm sorry to have ruined your day. For a novice, I think that somewhere between one and five milligrams is a good starting point. My business partner cuts these in half and that works for him. I can have two or three, and that works for me. It's just personal preference, and the effect is also very personal.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.