An ode to Minnie Bell's gooey mac and cheese, the best in the Bay Area
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The macaroni and cheese from Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement in Emeryville.Soleil Ho / The Chronicle
Before Minnie Bell’s, my understanding of great macaroni and cheese — a version of the classic American noodle dish that could stand alone on its own merits — was mostly an abstraction.
It included snatches of sensation from other experiences that were pretty good, but missed something elusive that kept them from fulfilling the ramped-up Platonic ideal I’d kept in my head: They were moist but grainy; well-seasoned but dry; full of high-quality ingredients but soupy. Often, the experiences echoed the nightmarish disconnect between the steamy, oozing strands of cheese in the Stouffer’s commercials and the real thing wrapped in plastic that I still remember from childhood.