The Manhattan Times

It’s me or the Mac ‘n’ Cheese

by Adam Garrett-Clark

Rarely does one dish send such shockwaves through a restaurant.

Its absence drew a line between a cook and his patrons and potentially curdled the relationship between an owner and his high profile chef.

That dish is the lobster macaroni and cheese and its eerie disappearance and recent resurrection will become the gooey stuff of legend at the Indian Road Café on W. 218th Street in front of Inwood Hill Park.

The dish, created by former chef Brian Newman and later refined by his sous chef Aaron Kindig, developed a loyal following at the now year-and-a-half old Inwood eatery. It was a top seller, right up there with the vegetable Thai curry.

It boasted a sauce made of four different cheeses. Fontina, Asiago, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Pecorino-Romano were melted down into a cream sauce accented with truffle oil. In a hefty bowl the sauce enveloped macaroni and generous hunks of Maine lobster.

But customers were chagrined this summer to learn that it had been hoisted off the menu.

When chef James Bellicchi came onboard last June, his name was meant to raise the restaurant’s profile, and he did what all chefs of his caliber do – he revamped the menu.

His modern-American style, honed at the New England Culinary Institute at Montpelier, Vermont, and refined at Terra Restaurant in Napa Valley, the Gramercy Tavern downtown and New Leaf Bar and Restaurant in Ft. Tryon Park, was exactly what owner Jason Minter had expected.

“I took it off the menu right off the bat,” Bellicchi said of the mac and cheese dish. Part of his job was to streamline the cooking process, and Bellicchi said the dish didn’t work with his new set up for the kitchen. And frankly, he just didn’t like it. He thought it was unhealthy.

Minter respected his new star chef’s opinion, conceding that he would have to choose his battles.

“We had that conversation early on,” Bellicchi recalled. His disdain for the dish was such that he essentially told Minter, if it’s on the menu “you’re gonna have to look for another chef.”

But as the summer wore on, Minter received an overwhelming response from his customers. In the comment box, in emails, from his waiter reports and to his face, everyone wanted to know: “what happened to the lobster mac’n’cheese?”

Around dinner time one night a group of four sat down at a table and opened the menu, when they realized the dish wasn’t there they got up and walked out. Waiters were getting frustrated groups who had traveled from Wall Street and biked up from the Village in search of the dish only to find that it had been axed.

There was one man from the Upper West Side, waiter Kwame Nash remembers, who without fail would stop by the restaurant every Thursday at the end of his jog to have a bowl of lobster mac and cheese. The Thursday he came and learned the dish was gone was his last.

“It really was out of control,” said Minter, who may be the only man in Inwood to ever lose sleep over lobster.

Eventually realizing he had to do something, Bellicchi created his own alternative. It was a baked macaroni dish using the same four cheeses in a béchamel sauce that included bacon lardons and Japanese breadcrumbs.

Customers were receptive to it, some actually preferred Bellicchi’s version, Minter remembered. But it wasn’t the same. In the end, the dish became indicative of the split between Bellicchi’s high-end style and the desire of the restaurant’s customer base.

Affirming its theme as American comfort food, Minter resurrected the decadent dish a few weeks ago and parted ways with his chef.

“You have to give people what they want,” Minter said.

Chef Kindig, who refined the now famous bowl of macaroni and cheese, has been promoted to head chef. Bellicchi has moved on, focusing on his in-home catering business, Culinary Solution.

“I like James, his food is incredible,” Minter said, adding that he hopes the two can remain friends. “It just wasn’t the right fit for the restaurant.”

The Manhattan Times is the bilingual newspaper of Washington Heights and Inwood.