Trends today often arise from recycled ideas, whether it be fashion, television or music, and food is no exception. We are all far too familiar with shoveling back spoonfuls of Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese as a kid and even as poor college students. We ate the stuff until we couldn't stand the sight of another box for at least a good year and grew up deprived of the real thing, as the evolution of Easy Mac became the perfect alternative to cooking. Recently Calgary restaurants have reinvented and, in a way, re marketed mac 'n' cheese to be the new high-end comfort food for the soul and my cuisine curious compadre and I plan to see what all the rage is about...one version of mac 'n' cheese at a time.
You couldn't find two people better suited to the task of a glorified mac 'n' cheese-off than fellow foodie Shelley Lodge and I, as we both leap at any chance to try new restaurants in Calgary and have taste palates fit for kings (we place our faith in Calgary's mac 'n' cheese sporting merchants not to be counterproductive of that of course). The task at hand seems simple thus far, step one: research places serving souped up versions of mac 'n' cheese or in our case, revisit menus where we once spotted the dish, word-of-mouth is also useful, step two: compile a list, step three: commence! And commence we have, today being the first of many mac 'n' cheese endeavors.
Diner Deluxe, located on 8th avenue and Edmonton trail has always stood out as the perfect spot for breaky or brunch and the fact that it shares a wall with Urban Baker bakery has always made this combo the perfect one-stop-shop on lazy Sundays. The 1950s inspired Diner Deluxe gave us a fine welcome to the beginning of our tour (even on a Wednesday evening), with its friendly old-time diner digs and surprisingly quaint dinner hour atmosphere. We ordered the 'Baked Macaroni with Sun dried Tomato, Basil Pesto & White Cheddar Cheese' for $12.95 that came with a thinly sliced piece of garlic buttered toast that Shelley washed down with a glass bottle of Coke just to finely tune her retro mac 'n' cheese experience. We both agree that the pesto is a nice touch, however, its flavour tended to dominate the actual cheesiness of the dish. We gave it the benefit of the doubt though because the diner itself doesn't self proclaim this dish as mac 'n' cheese per se. The amateur mac 'n' cheesees that we are, we gave Diner Deluxe a generous 16/30, which may change pending further investigation.
As we continue our mac 'n' cheese tour of Calgary, we have developed a set of criteria in which we will be grading each new version of mac 'n' cheese that we come across. We will assess our tasty project according to these six criterion:
DINER DELUXE
- Authenticity 2/5
- Flavor 3/5
- Cheesiness 2/5
- Baked Topping 1/5
- Creativity 4/5
- Presentation 4/5
- Total = 16/30
