The Edible ClubVanessa Lavorato

Los Angeles-based television host, chocolatier, and food writer and stylist Vanessa Lavorato currently develops recipes for major CPG brands and food publications, styles food for commercial photography shoots, writes about food for Gossamer, Resy, and Time Out, and hosts a weekly live cooking show called The Edible Club. Previously, she co-hosted and culinarily produced VICE’s James Beard Award-nominated cannabis cooking show Bong Appétit, and founded an edible chocolaterie called Marigold Sweets, which she relaunched this year, bringing the signature line of salted caramels to California dispensaries. 

Born in California and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Lavorato graduated from UC Berkley with a degree in art history and Italian. But the biggest lesson she took from her time at the Bay Area school was in finding her calling at the crossroads of entrepreneurship, food, and cannabis. An adherent to the Slow Food Movement, she launched pop-up eateries with award-winning chefs and worked to apply the same principles to what she knew about chocolate from her time working at See’s Candies in high school. She has since continued her education, including staging at Alice Waters’ Sustainable Food Project at the American Academy in Rome.

She founded Marigold Sweets in 2010, the same year she graduated, and continued her commitment to the Slow Food ethos – responsibility in sourcing, prioritizing flavor, and maintaining artisanal quality – in the decade since, while also navigating the ever-changing cannabis edibles legalization landscape.

Starting in 2016, Lavorato co-hosted three seasons and 40 episodes of Bong Appétit. She also was the culinary producer of the first two seasons, which Rolling Stone described as featuring “dreamy sequences about sourcing local ingredients [and] bite-sized lessons in how to infuse various fats and oils.”

Vogue called Lavorato “the chic cannabis chocolatier who will change the way you think about edibles,” and her varied projects all center on the combination of her deep knowledge of cannabis and its industry, elegant sense of style, and epicurean expertise. Popular recipes like double chocolate weed brownies, adaptations of comfort food classics like cornbread, and fun snacks like infused Cheez-It crackers demonstrate how Lavorato’s sense of food carries broad appeal – as shown by her more than 80,000 followers on Instagram, 10,000 followers on Twitter, and the hundreds of paying members from as far away as New Zealand, London, and Canada who tune in each week to The Edible Club for her broadcasts. 

In addition to the cooking demonstrations, the international club discusses current affairs, their lives, and, of course, weed. “There’s no doubt about it: Lavorato is highly telegenic,” says California Magazine. “She’s charismatic. And she establishes good chemistry with cohosts and guests alike as she adroitly communicates fascinating information on preparing cannabis-infused goodies that both taste good and gently transport the consumer to other, happier realms.”

When not on camera or in the kitchen, Lavorato enjoys gardening and visiting family on Kauai to ride horses and swim with her uncle’s dog, Bruno.