Paul’s Pasta’s Buffalo Mac-n-Cheese: So Good, You’ll Need An Intervention

Not that Americans need an excuse, but the Super Bowl makes the perfect occasion for pigging out. In the two excruciating weeks leading up to the most over-hyped sporting event on the planet, football fans talk almost as much about what they will eat and drink during the game as they do about the game itself. News networks devote valuable airtime to matters as urgent as tips from celebrity chefs for making queso dip, and on game day the entire nation’s annual pizza deliveries peak by halftime.

Perhaps no food elicits the machismo of the Big Game as easily as buffalo wings do. This makes sense. Fiery hot sauce and fatty bleu cheese seem fitting metaphors for the grit and girth of an immovable offensive line, and for all the indulgent excesses of the Super Bowl itself. And it doesn’t even have to be wings. Buffalo shrimp, buffalo pizza, buffalo queso dip—as soon as the winning quarterbacks take a knee with the clock winding down in the conference title games, I start salivating for buffalo whatever.

This year I surrendered to my buffalo lust three times over Super Bowl weekend—at a friend’s house during the pre-game show, with traditional wings; late the night before, out with friends after a few beers, with wings AND shrimp; and most memorably, supper Friday night at Paul’s Pasta in Groton, with a heaping plate of their specialty buffalo mac-n-cheese.

When on Thames Street 23 years ago this week, in February 1988, they didn’t have buffalo mac-n-cheese on the menu. (For the record, that was just days after Super Bowl XXII, when the Washington Redskins were world champions.) In fact, Paul’s didn’t add the dish until last year. “After seeing so many restaurants go through this mac-n-cheese craze, we decided we’ve got to do our own,” Paul Fidrych explained.

Praise the Lord that they did. Paul’s certainly did fine all those years without it, but this dish stands out not only on Paul’s popular menu, but also among buffalo-blessed recipes everywhere.

Large elbows of macaroni, homemade on Paul’s basement extruder, embrace one another in a creamy, luxuriant drenching of cheddar cheese and “buffalofredo,” concocted from Paul’s regular alfredo sauce and good ol’ Frank’s Red Hot. A dusting of gorgonzola Panko breadcrumbs delivers a bite and a pleasing crunch that merely emphasizes the creaminess of the rest of the dish. Parmesan and Romano cheeses and butter make the breading all the richer.

My dinner serving arrived piping, scorching, blisteringly hot. The melty, orange-tinted sauce bubbled against the sides of the casserole dish as its divine buffalo aroma steamed heavenward. Between forkfuls, I stirred the macaroni in the hopes of helping it absorb more and more of the sauce. A basket of perfectly toasted garlic bread came in handy for soaking up the rest.

Paul’s need not fear adding a few more splashes of Red Hot. On my buffalo hotness scale, this mac-n-cheese ranks “medium,” at most, and we buffalo lovers love buffalo for its heat. So bring it. If nothing else, making the plate fierier might force me to eat more reasonable portions. Halfway through, I had to have a fairly serious conversation with myself, which turned into an outright intervention. Finally, I persuaded me to put the fork down. Overnight Friday and Saturday in my refrigerator, the leftover elbows absorbed the rest of the buffalo sauce, and for my Super Bowl breakfast I picked up right where I’d left off.

Buffalo mac-n-cheese $10.50 large/$6.99 small

Paul’s Pasta Shop

223 Thames Street, Groton, CT 06340

(860) 445-5276