Luna Park

694 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 553-8584

My friends and I visited Luna Park during an epic attempt to have 6 mac & cheeses at 6 different restaurants – we failed; only made it to 3 places. I could have kept going but my compatriots where getting that weird cheese high and they were losing their grip on reality. I guess my cheese tolerance is higher than the average bear.

Luna Park is a very popular spot and was pretty busy by the time we got there on a Friday night at around 7 pm. It got even busier after we were seated in the outside area (no alcohol allowed). We were on a mission and quickly ordered the Oven Baked Mac & Cheese with Broccoli ($14.50) and add Applewood Smoked Ham ($15.50).

This is pretty pricey but once the plate hit the table, we saw why:

look at those creamy shells!

This thing is HUGE! Each shell is the length of my pinky finger and at least an inch thick. The shells were nicely cooked and supported the dish’s heft nicely. The upside of having such a big shell is that it captured a ton of  creamy sauce.

The sauce was super creamy, not too thick and not too thin with a nice pronounced cheese flavor – lots of cheddar and I think there was some Parmigiano-Reggianno too. (****Update: according to Chef  Nick Cobarruvias, he uses Cheddar, Gruyere, Parmesan, Cream Cheese, and Fontina) I was very happy that the sauce did not dry out during the oven baking. It did however take on a slight bit of graininess. I was the only one that noticed it off the bat so it was only very slight.

The biggest downside of this mac & cheese was the add-ons. The broccoli was entirely overcooked and the ham was super salty. Each of us only had about 2 scoops of the mac and cheese and that was enough because of the salt level.

But the big upside was that Luna Park is participating in Scoutmob’s deal site. There are no coupon’s to print – just show your phone to your server. In this case the offer was for 50% food and drinks. So our $15.50 mac & cheese, arnold palmer, and soda turned out to be $10!!!!! SUPER DEAL! We left a total of $20 and were all happy campers. I guess the bottom line is that I think this mac and cheese is overpriced – I would be very happy to pay around $7 – $9 for it at this level of execution.

~cheese, you taunt me so~