NYC Best Mac & Cheese: S’Mac is open until 1:30AM Friday & Saturday

October 17, 2008

Since moving to the East Village, my eating to do list has grown immensely, but one place that has been on it for a while is S’Mac, on 12th street between 1st & 2nd Avenue. Sarita’s Macaroni & Cheese offers 12 standard varieties in addition to the option of creating your own. All are served in a metal skillet and you can add bread crumbs at no extra cost. And in an exciting late night eats update, they’re open until 11:30PM weekdays and until 1:30AM on Fridays and Saturdays. Each of the four mac & cheese flavors I tried were tasty, only one really shined through. Read on to find out which…

S’Mac’s 4 Cheese with Bread Crumbs is more like Mac & Cheese crème brulee.

The Answer is Bread Crumbs

I ordered 4 “nosh” sized flavors of mac & cheese, each varying in cost, only one was topped with bread crumbs and it was by far the best:

Clockwise from the left:

Buffalo Chicken ($6.75) – Cheddar, American, boneless chicken, buffalo sauce, topped with crumbled bleu cheese upon request. Extremely flavorful, not very spicy. A little too intense sauce-wise to get a larger size portion.
Four Cheese ($5.75) – Cheddar, muenster, gruyere and a touch of pecorino. Balanced flavor and amazing with the crispy, cheesy breadcrumbs on top. My favorite one of the whole bunch.
Napoletana ($5.75) – Fresh Mozz, roasted tomatoes, roasted garlic, and fresh basil. While the flavor was good, it was the most watery of the four, probably as a result of the fresh mozzarella and tomato.
Create Your Own ($6.25 Nosh size plus $1.50 for three toppings) – Muenster, cheddar, broccoli, chicken, slab bacon. This seemed like a no-brainer combo, but there wasn’t enough broccoli to go around and the bacon was too sparse and chunky, as opposed to crumbly, to really provide the flavor kick I was hoping for. Chicken was mediocre, didn’t provide much of a presence. I think this would have benefitted from the addition of bread crumbs and the replacement of muenster with pepper jack, to add some spice.

The bread crumbs made the Four Cheese extra crispy and extra delicious. It was by far my favorite. Why?

Mac & Cheese’s best quality is the convergence of crispy and cheesy, the bread crumbs provided this with every bite.
I was expecting to have lots of burnt cheese to scrape from the skillets, instead, only the four cheese with bread crumbs offered this deliciousness.
The bread crumbs provided a solid wall to prevent heat from escaping the mac and cheese as we ate it. This was the only mac and cheese of the four I tried that was still hot by the time I took my last bites.