Planet Mac: disregarding the obvious pun

Hoboken is known far and wide for its variety of restaurants, a condition which leads to an interesting competitive characteristic. For every restaurant in Hoboken, there is typically another restaurant offering a similar, if not same, product in a different environment. The number of pizzerias, Chinese restaurants, delis, and more are absolutely mind-boggling and make for tough decision-making.

There are some restaurants, though, have had a stranglehold on a particular culinary niche for some time. Pizza Republic, known to the Stevens community for its macaroni and cheese dishes, has been one such restaurant. But this week’s column isn’t about Pizza Republic. Instead, this week I reviewed Planet Mac, a new challenger threatening to unseat the self-proclaimed “Mac Daddy” of Hoboken.

Planet Mac is located along downtown Washington Street, the section near Muscle Maker Grill, One Republik, and others — basically the busy area of Hoboken on a weekend night. It opened in the neighborhood of last summer, and since then has been offering a variety of macaroni and cheese dishes of many varieties. Their dishes come in several sizes: Venus, Jupiter, and Galaxy. Venus is a smaller size which can satisfy most, Jupiter is somewhat bigger and requires quite the individual appetite, and Galaxy is somewhere between an eating challenge and a single, large platter to be shared by a group.

For the review, I brought some friends on the tail end of a Friday night out to try, partially since we were already downtown, and partially since I was genuinely curious to try some more of their dishes. We each ordered a small size of a different dish, then took turns passing around the platters to get a good sampling.

First, the Vodka Tomato Cream Mac, featuring grilled chicken, garlic, tomato, basil, and all the house trimmings (cheese, bread crumbs, etc.), all surprisingly well-seasoned. Most dishes that label themselves as anything like a “vodka sauce” or “vodka cream” will come out relatively bland, leaning heavily on the sauce; not so with this dish. Next, the Taco Mac, complete with ground beef, onions and peppers, pico de gallo, and tortilla strips. As unnecessary as such a claim might seem, I was actually quite impressed with just how much it tasted like a taco turned into macaroni and cheese. Next, the Fried Chicken BLT Mac, my favorite dish from past dealings with Planet Mac. This platter is loaded with buttermilk fried chicken, slab bacon, leeks, and brie. BRIE. It is absolutely delicious and definitely pushing the higher end of what you can reasonably do with “simple” macaroni and cheese.

That pushing of the envelope reaches its pinnacle with our final platter, the Lobster Mac. It’s not something I would normally order, mostly because I tend to distrust whether or not lobster or crab in a finished dish is on the up and up, but it certainly tasted authentic and looked generally right (as right as chopped pieces in a pasta dish can be). If you’re willing to go for the higher price and really want lobster, go for it.

One other solid category of cuisine offered by Planet Mac is their Constellation Mac and Cheese Balls. The variety isn’t quite as good in this category, but the final product, their mac and cheese prepared fresh, then breaded and fried, more than makes up for the limited selection. We went for the Buffalo Chicken Mac Balls, and while they were a smidgen hotter than I had anticipated, they were absolutely delicious. The breading held up and was quite crispy, while the macaroni and cheese on the inside remained gooey and consistent.

Planet Mac takes a niche product already offered in Hoboken and runs with it. Their selection and variety of macaroni and cheese platters is impressive in its own right, but what they really excel at is making dishes that succeed at tasting exactly like they should. Their recipes are tailored such that no individual ingredient is drowned out by any other, all co-mingling to produce a genuinely delicious dish. In short, everything just tastes right.

Now, the $50,000 question becoming increasingly apparent: how does it stack up against Pizza Republic. On the surface, Planet Mac obviously focuses the vast majority of its effort into its macaroni and cheese, while Pizza Republic offers a variety of other pizzas, calzones, salads, sandwiches — you name it. Pizza Republic also doesn’t go quite as high-end as Planet Mac (you’re not finding lobster at Pizza Republic), but Pizza Republic is definitely closer to campus, less expensive, and offers a number of specials for Stevens students.

It’s not my place to go about judging if Pizza Republic continues to be the “Mac Daddy” of Hoboken, but it definitely is safe to say that there is absolutely a challenger to the “natural order,” and it has Mac and Cheese Balls.