Who's your mac daddy?

After 75 years, it's time to think outside the box.

Kraft Canada recently staged an advertising campaign in support of its ubiquitous macaroni and cheese product, Kraft Dinner. KD, as it's more commonly known in the Great White North, first hit store shelves in 1937. But thanks to an online promotion called "Make It Epic," KD is now being claimed by a new generation of mac-and-cheese connoisseurs.

The rules of the contest, which wrapped up last month, boiled down to this: after registering at KD's Facebook site, participants were encouraged to upload pictures and/or video of Kraft Dinner prepared in any way, shape or (burp) form.

Entries ranged from the appetizing (KD nachos, KD pizza) to the anomalous (KD parfait, anyone?). And although the winning recipe -- "super cheesy bacon shrimp KD lasagna" -- sounds yummy enough, it doesn't hold a candle to what Winnipeg chef Scott Bagshaw calls "the best KD ever."

"My friend Jamie's grandmother used to cook it for us when we'd go there for sleepovers," says Bagshaw, the part-owner and head chef at Deseo Bistro, located at 696 Osborne St. "My mom would make it and it'd be fine, but it was never as incredible as Jamie's grandmother's."

Bagshaw says that his friend's grandmother's trick was to cook the noodles until they were almost done. After straining them, she would add cream instead of milk, and a homemade cheese sauce in place of KD's infamous orange powder. Then she'd put everything back on the stove for another 10 minutes or so.

"I didn't understand what she was doing at the time, but I get it now," Bagshaw says. "The way she prepared it brought out all the starches, so the end-product was always super-creamy and velvety."

Bagshaw isn't surprised by the current resurgence of macaroni and cheese, either in its no-nonsense, KD form or as an inspired entree on restaurant menus across North America. (Never mind that Gourmet Magazine posted an online slideshow of some of the most scrumptious mac and cheese concoctions known to man; there's now a food truck roaming the streets of Chicago -- a mack truck, we're guessing -- that sells only macaroni and cheese.)

"The whole concept of comfort food has come a long way," says Bagshaw, who began offering his own take on mac and cheese, featuring hand-rolled fusilli, chorizo and manchego cheese, about 18 months ago. "Nowadays, people enjoy going out and ordering food that tastes like something they remember. Mac and cheese is obviously one of those things that everybody recognizes."

In honour of KD's diamond anniversary, we recently hit the streets to see what types of macaroni and cheese dishes are being served in Winnipeg. Given what we discovered, we'll be hard-pressed ever to look at a bottle of ketchup the same way again.

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Chef Scott Bagshaw of Deseo Bistro with his take on mac and cheese. (JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

Barbecue pulled pork mac and cheese

Le Garage, 166 Provencher Blvd.

Accidents will happen.

"Adding pulled pork to our mac and cheese was kind of a fluke," says Le Garage owner Ray Beaudry. "We were experimenting with poutine a couple of years ago when one of the cooks mixed barbecue sauce with the fries instead of gravy, by mistake."

One thing led to another and soon that same sauce, along with a hearty dose of barbecue pulled pork, found its way into the St. Boniface restaurant's mac and cheese.

Le Garage's mac and cheese ($12) is served in a french onion soup bowl, and is crowned with a melted layer of cheddar, Swiss and Monterey jack cheeses.

"When people spot it at a neighbouring table and realize that it's not soup, they get curious and usually end up ordering a bowl themselves," Beaudry says.

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Le Garage’s Beaudry, left, and chef Darryl Riddle. (BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

Le mac and cheese

Resto Gare, 639 Des Meurons Rd.

"When we changed over from La Vieille Gare to Resto Gare in 2008, we wanted to fill our menu with bistro items," says owner Linda Love. "We racked our brains trying to come up with different ideas, but we all agreed that mac and cheese was the quintessential bistro item."

Resto Gare's "le mac and cheese" ($14) is served piping-hot from the oven in an individual-sized, cast-iron frying pan. Love says customers can dress it up with a variety of options, among them, asparagus, green beans, ham or roasted chicken. But the most popular finishing touch, she says, is lobster ($27).

"People get a kick out of having a poor man's dinner of mac and cheese and making it decadent and glitzy by adding lobster to it," she says.

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Resto Gare’s Curtis Love with le mac and cheese. (BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

Scalloped bacon mac and cheese

Confusion Corner Bar & Grill, 500 Corydon Ave.

"I grew up on Kraft Dinner," says Kevin Byrne, the manager at Confusion Corner Bar & Grill. "My mom was a nurse and she worked a lot of nights. So it was our task to make dinner, which meant a lot of KD with sardines or cut-up hot dogs in it."

Three years ago, Byrne revisited his youth when he introduced his own spin on mac and cheese to the Confusion Corner menu.

"The reason I chose scallops is I wanted to treat it as a high-end mac and cheese," he says. "To match that, we use double-cut bacon so that there's a bit more texture and flavour to the dish. We top it off with four different cheeses, then sprinkle bread crumbs on top." (Confusion Corner's mac and cheese entree is $18, or $11 without scallops.)

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Confusion Corner’s Stephanie Whitlock with mac and cheese entree. (BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

Baked mac and cheese

Elements The Restaurant, 599 Portage Ave.

"Even with all the twists that are going on with mac and cheese nowadays, none are such a stretch that they take people out of their comfort zones," reasons Ben Kramer, head chef at Elements The Restaurant.

Elements' "baked mac and cheese" includes bacon, green onions and a combination of cheddar cheese and goat cheese.

"It comes in two sizes -- $8 and $13 -- and we also have a kid's mini-version, where we take out the onions and goat cheese," says Kramer who, since becoming a parent, has been known to serve up the odd box of KD at home. "My kids like it so I do make it for them every once in a while. Only I make sure to add broccoli or something to it."

Good news: Kramer hasn't had to expel anybody from the university-run Elements for desecrating his dish with ketchup, yet.

"But we do get a lot of requests for hot sauce," he says. "Sriracha is the new ketchup around here."

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 14, 2012 E1