People who use foot and inch marks instead of typographer quotes drive me to distraction. A foot mark is ' and an inch mark is " and both are poor substitutes for an actual apostrophe (’) and double-quote marks (“”).
But I admire the designer of the logo for S’Mac, the new mac-and-cheese restaurant I supped at today, because its apostrophe resembles an elbow of macaroni. The cheesy connection extends inside to the pasta-colored wood floors, injection-molded orange plastic chairs and especially the hanging lights with orange and yellow shades and bulbs that bathe the front window and interior in the glow of the ’70s or of those heat-lamps that warm movie popcorn and McDonald’s fries.
Each variety of mac-and-cheese is served piping hot in a small, medium or large cast-iron skillet and can be made with traditional macaroni or whole wheat pasta if you demand a fractionally healthier meal. Optionally, your mac-and-cheese can be topped with breadcrumbs. Oh my, yes; I highly recommend the breadcrumbs. They brown up all crispy and crunchety and so very tastily. I am salivating now recalling this meal.
Fans of cheese must go to S’Mac. I had the four-cheese mac-and-cheese, made with Muenster, American, Gorgonzola and topped with a separate stratum of cheddar, which sounds impressive. But they also have goat cheese, Gruyere, Manchego and Brie varieties.
Being located in the East Village it goes without saying that the busy dinner crowd hunkered over its skillets was disproportionally clad in chunky glasses, ironic T-shirts, thrift-store sweaters and expensively tousled hair. But if you can put up with that and more of the same on the L train ride across town, S’Mac’s a winner.
I wonder about the shelf-life of “one dish” restaurants like this. In theory, they’re gimmicky, and Manhattan has a strong bullshit detector. But it seems at least to have worked for restaurants that, say, slather everything with peanut butter or serve nothing but sushi from a buffet the length of an aircraft carrier. And mac-and-cheese is such an American tradition, I think it’s a safe bet for success. Live long and prosper, S’Mac.
S’Mac
- 345 E. 12th St. (between First and Second Avenue)
- (212) 358-7912
- Meal 31 of 52: small mac-and-cheese ($5.75).