Macaroni and cheese - once a comfort-food staple of every Wednesday night dinner while your dad works through the night publishing a newspaper with hot type press - isn't what it used to be. And thanks to Marrow Kitchen and Bar, which makes no apologies for food steeped in indulgence, squiggles of meaty, housemade daily cavatelliare enmeshed in a Mornay sauce and delivered in a cast iron pot for an elegance of the re-imagined comfort food crafted like no other.
The immodestly rich recipe is completely hedonistic. Every chef, every cook, every kid and every home-kitchen tongs-twirler has his or her own version of macaroni and cheese, but Marrow's orchestration - with a $2 option for bits of salty, delightful pork belly nubbins - is so sensual - so wonderfully immoral - that it makes my heart race just thinking about it.
Each pasta piece is perfectly cooked al dente. Creamy, cheesy béchamel sauce with just the right amount of salt, this is what lovers of noodles and cheese sauce rhapsodize about. The baking pot arrives hot, the top layer of pasta burnished and browned. It's already awesome thanks to the Mornay sauce ($17), but the option to add the pork belly or truffle mushrooms ($2) should be all but mandatory.
An order of this love in a pot doesn't come with a hammock, as it's serving size leaves room for deviled eggs ($8) or mussels with bacon lardons and bone marrow Hollandaise ($10) and, of course, two nationally-recognized craft cocktails. Oh, I have 3,000 words ready to burst out on Marrow's steelhead gnocchi ($24), but that's for another day.
MARROW KITCHEN AND BAR, 3 p.m. to midnight, Tuesday-Saturday, 2717 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.267.5299