I was viciously hung over the first time I visited Mac Daddy. It wasn’t planned, but one thing led to another and there I was: in the perfect state of mind to enjoy a restaurant specializing in massive portions of macaroni and cheese.
The restaurant did not let me down. Most of its 14 seats are at a counter facing an open range, allowing you to observe exactly how much cheese, bechamel and other artery-clogging ingredients chef Brandon Peacock is adding to the pan. Witnessing this excess makes for a glorious sort of anticipation.
What kind of mac does Mac Daddy specialize in? The menu proclaims that it’s “not yo mamma’s mac and cheese,” a construction that generally annoys me (what do you know about my mother’s cooking?) but in this case is accurate. My childhood mac was baked, not cooked on the stove, which made for a wonderfully crunchy noodle-and-cheese crust.
I often miss that textural variation in gloppy restaurant mac, but thankfully, at Mac Daddy they’ve given texture some thought. Each bowl is finished in the oven under a blanket of garlicky panko breadcrumbs and then topped with fresh green onion; some macs are even crowned with crispy onions or Fritos. Add-in fillings like walnuts and edamame also offer some crunch.
There are a dozen varieties on the menu, from carbonara to truffle, but on that first visit I got the simplest: just Pecorino and aged extra-sharp cheddar, which formed a zesty, creamy sauce that filled every cranny of the al dente macaroni. It was an excellent bowl of macaroni and cheese, one that I did not want to share or stop eating. I wish I felt the same way about the bowls that I had down the line.
Mac Daddy is the latest restaurant from Jocelyn Bulow (Chez Maman), and the latest iteration of a Potrero Hill space that has been in transition for almost a year. When Chez Maman moved to bigger digs around the corner, Bulow hung onto the narrow restaurant. He first tried a rotisserie concept called Dat Spot, but that didn’t take; while it served the neighborhood, it didn’t have the destination volume he needed.
Bulow found inspiration for Mac Daddy after a visit to Oakland’s Homeroom, a restaurant so famous for its near-endless variations of mac and cheese that it opened a takeout-only operation down the street. He and Peacock test-drove several dozen macs before landing on their menu, which follows Homeroom’s playbook, down to the huge portions (a half-order option would be welcome). Every mac can be made gluten-free, and for the mac-averse, there’s also fried chicken, cassoulet, and fish and chips.
Some flavor combos that sounded unnecessarily complicated actually came together, like the hearty Short Rib Mac, which includes mushrooms, rosemary and Mount Tam cheese — a little extra of the funky cheese would have sent it over the top, but the kitchen had a judicious hand. Others, like the South of the Border, could have used more flavor; despite fillings like chorizo and chipotle, it didn’t have much heat.
Veggies are important for a rich meal like this, but these offered roughage and little else. The kale salad had a sharp, Asian-style peanut vinaigrette that could have worked elsewhere but seemed at odds here with creamy macaroni, and the broccolini’s black garlic tasted unpleasantly muddy. And though the texture on the charred cauliflower was the perfect balance between crispy and mushy, I wanted the kitchen to dial back the curry spice blend just a bit.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment was the truffle mac. I was sitting next to college kids on a date on that first visit, and they had ordered mac and cheese perfumed with freshly shaved black truffles. I couldn’t wait to come back and try it, but when I ordered it at lunch the following week, the perfume was an echo of its former self and I could barely taste the expensive fungus, despite truffle oil and truffle brie along with the freshly shaved curls on top.
Which leads me to one of two conclusions: There was a different chef or another inconsistency in the kitchen, or my senses had been slightly compromised the previous visit. I’m not suggesting that an altered state is the best or only way to enjoy Mac Daddy — the restaurant was full of families, and a big serving of creamy macaroni is a panacea for many of the world’s ills. But if you do happen to find yourself in desperate need of a cheese-and-carb infusion, a bowl of Mac Daddy is not a bad place to start.
