snack: the carroll gardens MAC with bacon
drink: santa cruz organic orange mango sparkling beverage
i like to think that i'm on the cutting edge snackwise, someone who's got his eyes on the blogs & his belly full of unique & exciting foodstuffs. like, i knew that bacon was awesome WAY before it TOTALLY BLEW UP LADY GAGA STYLEE. a few weeks back, the village voice tipped me off to the upcoming opening of brooklyn MAC, a brand new restaurant in greenpoint that's focused on the good ol' american favorite, MAC & cheese. i totally missed out on the first nyc MAC & cheese wave when S'MAC opened up back in the summer of '06, so when brooklyn MAC finally opened up about a week back, i figured this was my chance to redeem myself.
it opened up in the space next door to CUP, a tiny coffee shop right next door that's owned by the same folks. personally, i go to the area often enough to visit my bro & i've never even noticed that CUP existed. it's on the block of norman just below manhattan ave & to me, the storefronts of both CUP & brooklyn MAC just sort of blend into the buildings around them. i stepped out of the train & was all "where the f is this place? oh, that's it? um, ok." CUP has some space, but the brooklyn MAC space is friggin tiny & unless you break acceptable social behavior & set up shop in the front window, there's no seating whatsoever. it's you, a counter & a kitchen. in fact, if you were some sort of wanker, when paying you could definitely ball your money up & hit the back wall of the kitchen with it.
so how is it possible to make a restaurant that serves nothing but MAC & cheese? like i mentioned, it's something that S'MAC has been doing for a few years now, as they've created variations on the old standby, variations like "masala," "mediterranean" & "cajun." with brooklyn MAC, their menu's divided up into "veggie MAC" & "meat MAC" options with each offering a few choices, all dishes dubbed with brooklyn-themed names. williamsburg? you're obviously on the veggie side, with sautéed mushrooms, scallions, tomato & mozzarella in with your MAC. park slope? for some reason your MAC comes with cheddar, hamburger & caramelized red onions. the coney island one has hotdog, sauerkraut, mustard & american cheese. that can't be good. the two non-MAC items on the menu are salads, named for mccarren & prospect park...OBVIOUSLY. roughage, people.
since they didn't have a dyker heights MAC, i opted for the carroll gardens MAC, a MAC & cheese from the "veggie MAC" side of the menu that's made with caramelized apples & brie. then, to throw the vegetarian/carnivore space-time continuum into severe flux, i had them add bacon for a buck & breadcrumbs. i'm cheap, so i only ordered the small size, which prices in at $7.25 sans bacon. sure it's filled with all kinds of gourmet goodness, but it seems like a lot for the portion you get. plus, it's three bucks more for the medium & another three bucks more for the large & i'll be damned if i'm paying over $10 for a dish of MAC & cheese. sure that's the norm for gourmet nyc MAC & cheese (S'MAC has comparable prices), but i'm still not sold on MAC & cheese being worth that much.
...& here's why i'm still not sold. the main elements of the dish, the MAC & cheese, were fine. you can't really screw up the MAC & the cheese was brie, which i'll eat in any & all forms. honestly, i was really in it for the way that those two ingredients interacted with the caramelized apples & the bacon. unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot happening on that front. the bacon lived up to its bacony potential, but the uniqueness of the brie flavor was sort of neutralized & the caramelized apples were lacking in flavor. where the f was the caramelizing? believe me, i did a lot of on-the-fork combining of the ingredients & i just wasn't feeling any sort of cohesion between them. it felt like a MAC & cheese dish with some stuff thrown in. maybe that's the point of a MAC & cheese-focused restaurant that lets you "build your own MAC," like some sort of college stoner experience, but i guess i expected more.
as for their beverage selection, they have virgil's soda, but other than that it's pretty much HFCS soda, HFCS soda, HFCS soda, $2.75 organic/natural soda. since i drink enough virgil's as it is & i'm trying to avoid HFCS as much as possible, i went with a can of santa cruz organic orange mango sparkling beverage. it's made by a company who, according to their website is "after 30 years...the most successful organic juice brand ever." EVER? wow. i guess that's pretty respectable. their orange mango sparkling beverage is made from sparkling filtered water, organic evaporated cane juice, organic mango puree, organic orange & organic lemon juice concentrates and organic natural orange flavor, so it's totally natural. get this: even though it's all natural, it actually tastes good. i know! crazy, right? it was fruity & sparkly & not too sweet. well done, likely-surfer hippie soda producers.
to put it lightly, i wasn't very impressed with brooklyn MAC. as an overpriced snack, the carroll gardens MAC was acceptable. i love a good plate of MAC & cheese as much as the next guy, but it didn't make me fall in love with gourmet MAC & cheese. maybe that's a lot to ask from one dish, but at the prices they're asking, part of me felt like it had to do that. plus, since there's no seating beyond the bench outside, if you're like me & don't live in the immediate area, your MAC & cheese is totally getting cold before you get to eat it. i can't help but think that it lost something because it was reheated...or at least i hope that was an excuse. i don't know. maybe i just don't love MAC & cheese enough. maybe i'm not ironic enough to embrace the fact that my dish's inherent americanness was infiltrated by a french cheese. maybe i, as a lover of the lower-case, am intimidated by the fact that, in the names of both nyc MAC & cheese restaurants, the word "mac" is capitalized. then again, maybe there's a reason that MAC & cheese is generally relegated to side-dish status.
brooklyn MAC, 77 norman ave, brooklyn, 718-706-9MAC