3 Mac & Cheese in 1 Night

One night, after our after-school crafting class, two hungry teachers did a Mac and Cheese Crawl through Brooklyn. It was an ambitious evening, but we perservered. Why? Who knows. Elbow Room on Flatbush ave, sharing space with Morgan’s BBQ, is a hip mac & cheese counter spot with a vegan option. They’re so hip that there’s one in the Barclays Center, too! (I’ll have to report on this location when I go to this.) Anyway, their vegan option: Vegan Queso Fundido–Soyrizo, pickled jalapeño with a nooch-based cheese sauce with those baby elbow noodles, topped with crispy tortilla, chunks of avocado and fresh cilantro. Despite two more stops on the itinerary, I devoured the whole cup. It was darn good. The cheese sauce needed a bit more kick though, especially if it was to stand up with the spicy jalapeño and the spicy soyrizo. Great start to our crawl!

Next, we were in a pickle. With our next stop closing very soon, we had to call in an order to pick up and try to bolt for a sweet stop-over at Dun-Well. But the BQE was harsh to us. We made it to Mykitchen to pick up my vegan mac & sheese from the cute counter spot run by the darling Kay, who stocks and interesting cross-section of vegan eats: house-made granola, cupcakes and pastries, special beverages… and mac & cheese. I have to say–Mykitchen was the best vegan mac & cheese I’ve ever purchased. This means really creamy, really flavorful, a baked top, and NO Daiya. [We didn’t make it for a doughnut. The callous Dun-well counter girl flipped the “closed” sign on the door a minute before she should as my friend and her son approached it, locking the door as they looked on with puppy eyes. Nice. Kid card denied!]

Our last stop: across the street and a few doors down from my dreadful parallel parking job, Brooklyn MAC. After a lot of mac & cheese, I was thankful that Brooklyn MAC had a small tin for $4. Brooklyn MAC has Daiya-infused mac & cheese. And they really load it up. When I lived in Brooklyn, I used to get a medium tin, about a 6-7″ diameter. But my body can’t eat Daiya anymore. As you get older, your body tells you what’s really up. I couldn’t eat any more than half of the small portion. I’d be lying if I said I felt good after this crawl–a sure sign of excess-success!