When my wife Wendy and I went to Springfield last Saturday, we wanted to end the day by eating somewhere that offered something different.
Wendy picked the Springfield Brewing Company (SBC), on Walnut Street downtown. What played out was, as they say, worth writing home about (or in this case, writing a column about).
After we actually got a good spot in the rather small SBC parking lot, we walked toward the door and Wendy noticed a pizza on somebody’s table next to a window. Man, it looked good.
We set foot inside and immediately noticed the jazz band playing at one end of the old, brick-and-wood building. Just a keyboard, drums and saxophone playing that classic instrumental, kind of abstract stuff; not exactly the music we’d listen to by choice, but it was nice, and certainly helped create a unique atmosphere.
After we were seated, we began looking at the menu and quickly noticed it was full of cool sounding choices. Included were three 12-inch pizza choices, and I’m a big pizza fan.
We got a couple of glasses of beer, and I liked one that had a weird name. Weird only because its name was “Mexi Cali,” which might make you think it would be a blonde lager like “Dos Equis,” but it was an amber beer – which I’m also a big fan of – and a darn good one at that.
Anyway, I also was drawn to one other item on the menu: the “Creole Mac” nestled among four mac-and-cheese choices. It said it had chicken, Andouille sausage, peppers and a spicy Creole sauce, and was made with St. Louis cheddar, mozzarella and shaved Parmesan.
I was like, “I’ll decide when we order,” but I was still thinking about how much I enjoy a good pizza.
When our cordial and friendly server, Drew, came to take our order, Wendy went first and got the steak tips dish with sweet potato waffle fries, a house ranch dip and plenty of sautéed onion. Then it was my turn.
“So the pizza here is pretty good?” I said, pretty much expecting a resounding “yes” of some sort as a reply.
“Well, I wouldn’t say anything bad about it, but I think the best part of the menu is up around here,” Drew said, pointing at the top-left of a page where the mac-and-cheese options were located.
“I’ll have the Creole Mac,” I abruptly said.
Drew smiled big-time and sort of nodded.
“Best choice on the menu,” he said.
When we were served, my choice came in a giant bowl, and right away looked like something you wanted to literally dive into. On the first bite, it was like, “oh my gosh!”
Trying to describe the taste of this stuff won’t be easy, because it’s not like anything else. But it consists of shell macaroni, lots and lots of cut chicken, a nice smattering of sausage chunks and a generous (but not overwhelming) amount of Anaheim peppers, all smothered (and kind of drenched by) this unreal sauce. The sum total results in an amazingly comfortable and alluring texture.
The taste? Well, let’s just say that it’s complex, robust, a bit spicy and altogether phenomenal. As you eat it, you can’t stop yourself from making those guttural sounds of satisfaction almost every time you remove your fork from your mouth and leave behind its delectable cargo.
At one point, I said, “I envision Guy Fiere sitting here going, ‘I’m on the Flavortown Express and I’m not coming back anytime soon!’”
A little later I said, “I have a serious case of happy mouth. It’s like my taste buds and the whole inside of my mouth are ringing.”
I’m here to tell you, this was an extraordinary eating rush. Wendy liked her dish, too, but she kept reaching over and stabbing mouthfuls out of mine.
“That is crazy good!” she said.
“One of the best things I’ve eaten in a long, long time,” I said.
It wasn’t a bad thing that there was so much of this stuff in my bowl, because that meant a second round of it was on the docket for the next night. For the record, it reacted well to being reheated.
When Drew came to our table late in our stay, I thanked him for his honest answer to my first question to him.
“Otherwise, I wouldn’t have ended up in mac-and-cheese heaven,” I said.
He went on to describe how the dish was “invented by servers” at SBC. He said some of them would combine the place’s great mac-and-cheese with ingredients from a creole dish on the menu. After some of the managers and chefs discovered how good it was, the next step was automatic.
“We threw it on the menu,” Drew said.
What a cool story about an absolutely fun thing to eat.
Wendy asked if it might be possible to get the recipe.
“I don’t know if they’ll give it up without killing me,” Drew said. “But I’ll ask.”
A little later he returned with a smile and a piece of paper bearing a bunch of hand-written instructions.
“You’re the man!” I said, high-fiving him.
If you happen to be in downtown Springfield with an appetite some night, drop in at SBC – you will not be disappointed. And say “hi” to Drew for me.
Doug Davison is a writer, photographer and newsroom assistant for the Houston Herald.
Email: ddavison@houstonherald.com.
