If you’re a pasta and cheese aficionado, chances are you’ve found your way to more than a few San Francisco restaurants that serve great macaroni and cheese. It’s today’s great foodie dish, landing on every bar, gastropub and Michelin-star menu. So it’s no surprise that it was hard to pick our favorites. For our list of six we selected from a wide variety of locations, from bars to upscale diners.
Cowgirl Creamery Sidekick Cafe & Milk Bar
San Francisco Ferry Building, #19
It’s a no-brainer that Cowgirl Creamery’s Ferry Building outpost has a kick-ass mac and cheese. Their version includes a blend of two signature cheeses: Wagon Wheel, the team’s oldest aged cheese (between 60 and 90 days, according to the store manager, Lexi) and Red Hawk, a triple-cream cheese made from organic cow’s milk. This white penne-pasta version is available to go as 10 ounces for $7.25, and you can add olives, pancetta, ham or blue cheese for an additional $2.00.
400 Haight Street
Lower Haight’s Rickybobby makes a mean jalapeño mac and cheese with aged Welsh cheddar, peppers and a cornbread topping that’s cooked to perfection, like everything else on their chalkboard menu. If you’re up for it, and not dining with a vegetarian, share the dish with friends and ask to top your pasta with pulled pork; the flavorful BBQ adds a Southern-style jolt to this sizzling $10.00 entree.
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3213 Scott Street
If there’s one place you won’t feel self-conscious about ordering mac and cheese, it’s at the newly opened Spaghetti Bros. in the Marina. The house-made orecchiette topped with New York cheddar Mornay and a green chili salsa is what our waitress described as an “adult mac and cheese.” The $16.00 starter is rich and meant to be shared.
203 Octavia Boulevard
With menu items that have caught the eye of the Food Network’s “Weirdest Restaurants,” it’s inevitable that Straw would have a killer mac and cheese. Combining traditional elbow macaroni with homemade cheddar béchamel and cheddar-cheese sauce, it also includes bacon (for flavor, and because “bacon is amazing,” says owner Ari Feingold) and apples for $7.00. Because who doesn’t love apples and cheese? And pasta. And bacon.
2209 Polk Street
Usually, bars are known more for their cocktails than cuisine, but with Beach Chalet alum Matt Lee on board, food at this Russian Hill gem is on another level. Enjoy the classic seashell pasta with jack and cheddar cheeses, or the seasonal, which features roasted winter squash topped with panco breadcrumbs, for $8.00. Not into vegetables? Wait until the spring, when Bullitt is set to debut a primavera version featuring pancetta and peas.
2140 Mission Street
Initially enticed by this back-alley-bar’s pork belly donuts, we were absolutely delighted by their fried mac-and-cheese bites. A truly original dish, Sycamore’s version of mac and cheese means forming pasta and cheese into balls and frying them. Made with American cheese, elbow macaroni, secret spices (seriously, the chef wouldn’t tell us) and your choice of roasted jalapeño or bacon for $7.75 or plain for $6.00, it’s easy finger food without all the fuss.
