Mac and Cheese, Please

I can't recall how I learned about Elbows Mac n' Cheese, but when I did, I couldn't wait for the opportunity to try it out.  I mean, an entire restaurant dedicated to macaroni and cheese, its got to be good.  But the restaurant is in Cerritos which is closer to Disneyland then it is Los Angeles, so it wasn't somewhere that we could go to easily.  And then Alton Brown came to town.  If you didn't know, Food Network personality and host of Iron Chef America Alton Brown is doing a national tour and his Los Angeles stop was in Cerritos.  Hooray!  Dinner at Elbows is in order.

Before we headed south I did do a small amount of research on the restaurant; well, at least enough to determine that I didn't need a reservation and that it was casual dining.  What I didn't realize until we arrived was that the restaurant was more of a fast food establishment like a Panda Express or a Baja Fresh, then it was a traditional casual dining restaurant à la Claim Jumper or TGI Fridays.

We approached the counter and perused the menu above the ordering station.  It should be noted that the posted menu varied from the paper menu that they had available for you to take home.  I also didn't notice the menu addendum on the side wall that offered up combo options and a make-your-own mac n' cheese option.  So if I could make one suggestion to them it would be to shore up the menu so that its clear and concise to those who are new to their establishment.

I saw the green bean fries and turned to my husband to inform him we would be ordering them.  When they arrived they looked like they had come directly out of a frozen package and into the fryer.  They tasted like it too.  They had so much breading that it was impossible to taste the actual green beans.  And the breading itself didn't have much flavor, so it was necessary to eat them with the two sauces they were served with, but that were never described.  Presumably the sauces were ranch dressing and cheese sauce, but the ranch was from a bottle and the cheese sauce quickly hardened and even it was lacking flavor.  We didn't even eat half of the green bean fries as they were just a waste.

Green Bean Fries (seasoned and battered crunchy green beans)

I ordered the lobster mac, hoping it would be oodles and oodles of yumminess.  It wasn't.  First it was a game of Find the Lobster.  And then once you found the lobster, you couldn't really taste it as it was overpowered by the cheese sauce.  I don't know if it was the asiago or the garlic, but the sauce was so intense in flavor that even if I was hungry enough there would be no way that I could finish the dish.  It was just too one note and that one note was too strong.  I was happy every time I found a piece of asparagus as it broke up the flavor palate.  In the end I just gave up eating the mac n' cheese and searched for the remaining lobster and asparagus.  The dish was served with two tiny pieces of garlic bread, that while tasty, needed to be toasted a little longer.

Lobster Mac (real lobster and fresh asparagus in a rich Wisconsin Asiago and Parmesan cheese sauce)

My husband ordered the jalapeño mac which I was a little jealous of.  Actually when I saw that it resembled traditional mac and cheese I regretted not ordering the Elbows Classic.  My husband took one bite and exclaimed that it was very creamy.  I did get the opportunity to take one bite and it was a lot better than my dish, but I didn't want to commit to that much jalapeño flavor.

Jalapeño Mac (spicy jalapeño and Wisconsin cheddar cheese topped with jalapeño slices and fresh tortilla chips)

Overall I would say the dinner was a disappointment and not worth another trip, even if we did find ourselves in Cerritos in the future.  One positive I will say is that I liked that the mac and cheese was served in individual baking dishes that would be easy to take home as leftovers and reheat.  That's it.