The Stoner Food Critic Joel Haas

The stoner food critic Joel Haas is on a mission to inhale America. Since 2018, the Northeast D.C. resident has vaped cannabis before eating 1180 meals at 525 fine dining restaurants in 20 states. Whenever possible, he targets Michelin-starred restaurants. He just got back from a trip to New York where he says he dined at all of the city’s 19 two-star and three-star Michelin restaurants in 10 days. Haas documents it all himself. “It’s progressed to the point where I’m shooting video and photos of every single thing that I eat,” he says. “I have pictures now of me taking bites of everything I’ve had in two or three or five angles of shots—the above camera shot of food, front, sides, and crotch cam where I put the camera down below on my lap and you get to see the fork go into my mouth.” Because eating a meal with Haas is like dining with a very aggressive Instagram influencer, he knows not to invite anyone to join him. “Bringing people out to eat, they just get in the way,” he says. Haas edits the photos and short clips into videos and organizes them by the city on his website, High-Speed Dining. Each city is a “season.” He’s published seven so far; three more are fully produced and another 12 seasons that shot and recorded. “I have 2.5 terabytes of content and over 300,000 photos in the can waiting for me to continue to finish to produce,” he says.