The Mac n' Cheese Smackdown

“Have you guys heard of S’mac?”

“No, but we’ve been hearing that question a lot.”

I’ve been in Mac Bar all of two minutes when I witness this exchange between the counter girl and the guy ahead of me in line.

Mac Bar has been open for about three weeks, so it’s no surprise that questions of its comfort food predecessor keep popping up. Sarita’s Mac and Cheese aka S’mac opened 2006, was the sole dedicated-dealer for mac and cheese until the arrival of Mac Bar. Located on Prince Street between Lafayette and Mulberry Streets, Mac Bar is a situated a little over a mile or a 15 minute walk from S’Mac in the East Village. With both comfort food joints residing east of Broadway and South of 14 street, is Downtown big enough for two mac and cheese joints? Or is this all too close for comfort….food?

I set out to find the better bowl of mac and cheese, a Mac and Cheese Smackdown if you please.

Giving preference to seniority I went to S’Mac first. East 12^th street, between 1^st and 2^nd avenues, is predominately residential. A few restaurants bookend the block but sleepy walkups fill out the middle. S’mac’s windows face an elementary school and its playground. Quiet as it is, the block feels like a neighborhood and S’mac is its well-worn comfort food joint.

The All American, the weapon of choice for this duel, is traditionally a blend of American and Cheddar Cheeses. Unfortunately I could not identify nor taste either in my bubbling skillet of macaroni and….butter, maybe. The noodles were the right balance on the firm- tender continuum; the cheese (?) sauce was shallow and faint. Sadly there was more cheese crowning the dish than what should’ve been holding the elbows together.

Wrapping up the second half of my mac and “alleged” cheese I hit the road. A brief walk lands me on the doorstop of Mac Bar. Mac Bar is a blip on this commercial strip; flanked by the boutique bookstore McNally Jackson and trendy restaurant Delicatessen, the latter a relative of sorts as they share management. Inside the cheese-yellow interior is plush to lacquer to S’mac’s kitsch and worn-out wood. Shaped like a curvy L or a maybe a shallow J, the space feels more like a neon alleyway than a storefront. Mac Bar comes off as the type of place where one would name drop, as one older Upper Eastside-esque woman did: “Is Tony here today?” she asked.

I order the same American and Cheddar mac, dubbed the Classic here. I’m accidentally given someone else’s order of the Carbonara. The counter invites me to keep it while I await my correct order. The Carbonara has a parmagiano sauce with bits of pancetta, dotted with green peas and drizzled with confetti-like shreds of basil. It’s a lovely bowl of mac-creativity that leaves residual spicy kick after the creaminess has settled. But that’s neither here nor there, as the matter I’ve come to resolve is the All American.

I finally get my Classic and the aroma of crisped cheese and well, more cheese waft from the aluminum container. Their mix of Cheddar and American has yielded a remarkably velvety sauce. My noodles could’ve taken a few more minutes in boiling water but the rich, pleasantly-dense cheese sauce picked up where the elbow noodles fell short. This mac and cheese literally, and figuratively, warmed my insides as it went down (and that’s saying a lot since this was technically my third bowl in two hours). While it wasn’t the hands-down best mac and cheese I’ve ever had, it definitely put the smackdown on S’mac. At least it did for the guy in front of me, as he pranced out still chatting on his phone his last few words floated out behind him:

“So, there’s this place called Mac Bar. We HAVE to go!”

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How Veganism Saved My Life: A Profile of Etisha Lewis

Etisha Lewis stands on her porch; it is a breezy May evening with the indigo sunset hovering low. She looks out to the snow-capped mountains that seem to touch the sky and listens to the faint sound of the river in the distance. Around the house, the quiet is so strong that she finds herself whispering, instead of talking, to those nearby. Jocko Valley, Mont is a long way from Crown Heights,Brooklyn. Moreover, Lewis’ current life is a long way from where she used to be.

“I was killing myself with food,” she said. “Your body is supposed to be a temple, but I wasn’t treating it like one.”

Lewis is referring to the childhood and teenage years that were spent in the hard-knock neighborhood of Crown Heights. Growing up on St. Marks Street, her after-school snacks alternated from several bags of chips to buy-one-get-one free General Tso’s chicken from the round-the-way Chinese spot.

“Growing up our block was filled with reggae music from the record store across the street and it smelled of Kennedy’s Fried Chicken from the corner,” said Jaime Lewis, Etisha’s younger brother.

What could have driven this 22 year-old from the concrete jungle of Brooklyn to the mountains of Jocko Valley, Mont.? From the ages of 16 to 18, Lewis’ eating habits worsened and her weight had reached its peak, maxing out at 200-210 pounds depending on which scale she used. She needed a change in her diet and her lifestyle on a whole. Over the course of two years, Lewis researched and began to monitor her eating habits and incrementally removed meat, fish, cheese and other dairies until she became a total vegan.

“I think God wanted me to do it really,” she said of her decision to be vegan.

Lewis describes the revelation as more of a series of impressions and individual challenges rather than a slit-second epiphany.

While in the process of overhauling her lifestyle, Lewis was fortunate enough to start her first business venture. She supplied wholesale brownies, cakes and other tasty treats, all of which were vegan, to various coffee shops and cyber cafes throughout Brooklyn. At the height of her venture, Lewis was supplying 15 to 20 outlets with baked goods on a bi-weekly basis. Over this period, she observed and tested each of the different outlets, and weighed the pros and cons of each to see which would best suit her goal of providing quality vegan food products that didn’t taste like the average vegan product.

“Basically, I was getting paid to gather research,” she said.

It is this goal has driven Lewis to Arlee, Mont., a town with a population of roughly 602 people. Here she is one of four interns at the Common Ground Farm, where she is spending the next six months. Part of Lewis’ vision for the future is to operate her own bakery that is stocked and supplied with the crops of the own farm. So here on the 240 acres of Common Ground, she is quickly learning the art of soil irrigation, crop rotation, and tractor maneuvering.

“I’m accomplishing a lot at once,” she says. “Which feels really good.”

What started as a desire to become fit has flourished into a bounty of possibilities and opportunities for Lewis. Now a svelte 125 pounds, and at the tender age of 22, Lewis faces the questions of her future. What is the next step after farm life, whether to open up shop in California or New York, and even deciding on a name for her vegan empire? But mainly, she is stoked about the success of her sprouting seedlings.

“Back in Brooklyn, I was always killing plants and stuff in grade school,” she said. “Now thingsare growing under my hand and that feels so good.”