Mac and cheese spent most of its life as the cheapest dinner in the house, the thing that fed a household on pocket change. Somewhere along the way, it got expensive and a little proud, turning up as a lobster-topped side on steakhouse menus and a handmade specialty at big-city cheese shops. National Mac and Cheese Day catches the dish in the middle of that climb, and the odd part is who ended up copying whom.
The turnaround took decades. Kraft boxed the dish in 1937, at a time when nobody mistook it for fine dining. It stayed that way for generations, a pantry staple built for stretching a grocery budget, not a menu built for showing off. For most of its life, nobody mistook it for fine dining. Steakhouses changed that when they folded lobster into a rich, cheesy side dish that could cost as much as the steak beside it, and cheesemakers followed by building reputations on a single bowl. By July 14 this year, National Mac and Cheese Day will find the dish carrying a kind of prestige it once had no claim to.
The price of eating out keeps climbing
Part of what pushed mac and cheese upmarket is math. Eating out costs more than it used to, and the gap keeps widening. Food prices away from home ran 3.5% higher this past spring than a year earlier, while groceries rose 2.7% over the same span. When a night out turns into a splurge, the splurge has to be worth the money, and a dish that once meant making do now means a small indulgence.
Steakhouses turned a side into a splurge
The steakhouse bowl is where that change shows most plainly, and one good example is the lobster macaroni and cheese at Morton’s The Steakhouse, which costs $27 and is not an entree. It is a side, priced like a main, sharing a menu with dry-aged ribeyes and cold-water lobster tails and holding its own against both. A dish that started as a way to feed a family for pennies now sits comfortably on an upscale steakhouse menu, and nobody blinks at the number.
The cheesemakers made it a pilgrimage
A different kind of proof sits in Seattle, Washington. At Beecher’s Handmade Cheese in Pike Place Market, cooks have served the “World’s Best” Mac & Cheese since 2003, made with the same Flagship and Just Jack cheeses handcrafted behind the glass a few feet away. Visitors watch the cheese get made, then eat it folded through penne with a hint of spice. The recipe has since traveled well beyond the counter, turning up in grocery freezers across the country. When the cheese is the whole point, the humble dish becomes something closer to a tasting.
Now the blue box chases the bowl
Here is the surest sign the noodle has climbed: the box is now imitating the bowl. In April, Kraft Mac & Cheese launched its first-ever Restaurant Edition, a line built to mirror the flavors of a sit-down meal. The brand tested more than 40 flavors before settling on three: Parmesan Pesto, Romano Cacio e Pepe and Monterey Jack Caramelized Onion, each engineered to taste like a night out at a price that stays home.
The line offers 30% more food per box than the classic blue box and still feeds a family of four for less than $1 a serving. For most of its history, restaurant mac and cheese chased the nostalgia of the blue box. Now the blue box is chasing the restaurant.
Comfort food keeps drifting upmarket
Kraft building a boxed line to imitate restaurant mac and cheese says something about where comfort food is heading. The line between the dish made from a packet and the dish made from scratch keeps thinning, and the humble version keeps drifting upward to meet the fancy one. On July 14, the smart move is not to pick a side but to notice that mac and cheese has become a food worth celebrating at every price point, from the cheese counter to the tablecloth to the pot on the stove.
Mandy Applegate is the creator behind Splash of Taste and seven other high-profile food and travel blogs. She’s also the co-founder of Food Drink Life Inc., a unique and highly rewarding collaborative blogger project. Her articles appear frequently on major online news sites, and she always has her eyes open to spot the next big trend.