Review: Social Kitchen & Brewery

Social Kitchen & Brewery
1326 9th Avenue, San Francisco
socialkitchenandbrewery.com

Nice presentation on a hot skillet

This past weekend, I was really craving mac and cheese, so I thought it'd be fun to try a recommendation I saw on a blog that I often read.  They had been mentioning several great places to get mac and cheese in the city and East Bay area.

So I found myself at Social Kitchen & Brewery to try their Truffle mac and cheese, consisting of mozzerella, fontina, and white cheddar cheeses, along with truffle oil.  It's also usually served with English peas, but I'm not a huge fan of peas, so I asked for them to hold on those.  I also got the applewood smoked bacon optional addition.

Such high hopes...

I was pretty excited to try their bread topping.  It was definitely some fried tempura breadcrumbs.  I'd had tempura breadcrumbs before, but never fried.  But the excitement pretty much stopped there on my first bite.

I was hit with a wave of oil taste.  It was like the cheese didn't have a strong enough flavor or didn't mix enough on it's own, so I felt like I was just hit with a strong taste of truffle oil, mixed with fried breadcrumbs.  Very bland.

Once digging into the mac some more and really stirring it around, it got better.  You had to make sure you got a really cheesy bite to make sure you got all the flavor.  Otherwise it just tasted like you were eating some oily noodles.  I'm not sure why it didn't all come better mixed together, but it was definitely more tolerable after putting in some stirring time.

Anyway, if you find yourself at Social, I would opt for one of their other delicious looking menu items (I want to go back for the tempura sweet potato fries!).  The mac and cheese needs a little more work before it can rank very high on this blog.

Happy eating!  Hope you've got some warm, gooey pasta plates in your holiday plans!