We know that we (and some of your other favorite restaurants) have rules that may not make sense to everyone–but unlike your curmudgeonly homeroom teacher, we have a better explanation than, “Because I said so.”

So here’s a list of questions that we hear most often, and if there’s something we forgot, please feel free to leave your question in the comment section below and we’ll be happy to answer it.

1. Why do you charge an extra .50 cents for breadcrumbs? Why doesn’t it just come on the macs?

This is probably the question we see most often on Yelp, and while it may seem stingy, we have very good reasons for both parts of the question. We have an upcharge for toasted breadcrumbs because panko is actually pretty expensive. Not only that, but pre-toasted panko is really gross, so our kitchen staff toasts pounds and pounds of panko every single day. This, of course, ends up costing us a lot, both in terms of the cost of the panko, and the cost of the labor it takes to toast it. To top it off, it takes an extra few minutes to be baked in the oven with the breadcrumbs, which also adds to the time it takes to make each dish, labor, electricity– you get the picture. Given all that, we think an extra .50 cents is actually a pretty great deal!

Breadcrumbs don’t come standard on all of our macs because, believe it or not, some people don’t like breadcrumbs on their mac (more people than you would think!). So instead of incorporating the price of the panko into all of our macs, we opted to keep our prices lower, and only charge for breadcrumbs when people actually want them. The exception to the rule is the Mac to Goat. Our goat cheese mac comes with breadcrumbs because we feel pretty strongly that you’ll like it better that way. Especially with the olive oil drizzled on top.

2. Why won’t you let me sit at a table before my friends get here?

We’re not just being mean when we politely say that we can’t seat you until the rest of your party arrives–there’s a very good reason for it! As you know, there is usually a wait at Homeroom for a table (especially for dinner). Now imagine we seat you at a table, and ten minutes later, your friends arrive and take a seat with you. Everyone looks over the menu, orders drinks, then orders dinner. That whole process just took ten minutes longer than a table who’s entire party was seated at once. Multiply that time difference by the number of tables in the restaurant, and suddenly the wait becomes much, much longer everyone. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? To keep our wait times as short as possible, we keep our tables full with complete parties, and try to seve them as efficiently as possible.

3. Why do you charge me if I bring in my own desserts?

The infamous “cake cutting fee,” is not in fact a fee for cutting cake (people ask all the time if we will waive the fee if they cut it themselves…). For some reason, we’ve found that people never question having a corkage fee if they bring in their own wine, but we do get a lot of pushback about having a cake-cutting fee–so here’s why we do it:

We charge $2.50 per person for a “cake cutting” fee if you bring in your own dessert, which is the price of our least expensive dessert. Why you ask? Because when people bring in their own dessert, that means they are sitting at the table for a longer amount of time, without purchasing anything, and still being served by our waitstaff and using our dishes that have to be washed by our dishwashers. This means your server, and the restaurant, loses out on being able to serve more guests as well as on the cost of the dessert you would have ordered if you hadn’t brought in your own. Multiply that by the many parties who do do this every week, and it actually has a pretty huge effect on Homeroom. So while we love for everyone to hang out and enjoy Homeroom, to keep all of our prices low, we have to charge if people bring in their own desserts.

4. Why won’t you seat two people in a booth, even when the restaurant is empty?

Ah, we hear this question all the time, and it’s the one that people get the most annoyed at. We know it seems crazy. We know you think we’re nuts because even when you and your friend are the only people in the entire restaurant, we won’t let you sit in a booth.

Let us explain.

We are a pretty small restaurant. We only have four tables in the entire place that can seat parties of 4 or more. If we sat 2 people at any of these tables, that would mean super long waits for larger parties, and longer waits for everyone because we’re not using all our available seats. Makes sense, right? We used to allow 2 people to sit at a booth during off hours, but then those same people would come back on a busy night and get angry with us for not letting them sit at a booth again. Plus, when other people would come in and see two people at a booth, they would want to sit at one too. So we changed our policy to a strict three-person minimum for the booths. It really does make for shorter waits and a better experience for everyone–so please don’t take a swing at our hosts when they direct you to one of our 2-person tables. We have some seriously some crazy stories of people’s reactions when they aren’t seated at a booth–so we’re hoping that by explaining this we’ll have a little less aggressive customer lore in the near future…

That’s all for today. We’ll answer more questions next time–when we’ll also reveal our brand new spring/summer menu! In the meantime, don’t forget about the super tasty dishes on our secret menu: Cacio y Pepe (the old exchange student), the Jalapeno Popper mac and an old fashioned peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The best New Year’s parties in our memories were low-key affairs—ordering pizza, dancing in the living room with friends, or having an all-night movie marathon.

So as an alternative to all the fancy and expensive New Year’s parties, we’re throwing one of our own in true Homeroom style—a beer and mac pairing, followed by tunes and drinks until midnight. We’ll have an early seating for all the families out there that don’t usually get to go out for New Year’s Eve, and a late seating for everyone else.

Tickets are $30 for the late seating and $25 for the early seating, and include samplers of three macs, paired with three different beers or wines. The family seating is from 6pm-8pm, (kids will get sepcial goody bags instead of beer or wine), and the grown-up seating starts at 9pm and includes killer tunes a champagne toast at midnight.
Buy your tickets online here:

Early Seating (6pm): http://earlycheesynewyears.eventbrite.com

Late Seating (9pm): http://cheesynewyear.eventbrite.com

As for holiday gifts—I think we can all agree that we’re over lame cableknit sweaters.  Instead, give the gift of mac and cheese. We’ve got gift certificates, t-shirts, and mugs for Homeroom fans.  We can even mail your gift certificate if you don’t have time to come in—we’ll take your order over the phone and mail it out the next day to yourself or directly to your loved one.

And lastly, how great would it be to have mac and cheese platters at your office holiday party? We’ll deliver any platter order over $200, so you can have hot, creamy mac and cheese whenever the party starts. We’re also taking platter orders for Hanukkah and Christmas – and asking anyone who ordered a platter for Thanksgiving– they’re pretty awesome. You can find pricing and details on our platter page: homeroom510.com/catering

As a small Oakland business, we want to say thank you for all your support this holiday season—we’re lucky to be a part of such an amazing community.  We look forward to ringing in the New Year with you!

That one day of the year, when all you have to do is eat. When everyone sits around a big table with plates full of juicy turkey, salty stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallow and loads of gravy to top it off (or if you’re like Allison and Erin, you substutite a big fat pork roast for the turkey. Is that wrong?)

Bryan and Mike show off their new mac creation

As you can probably tell, we are gigantic fans of Thanksgiving–and frankly, of eating in general. Which is why, now that we own a restaurant, we wanted to find a way for homeroom to make Thanksgiving even tastier. So we started playing around with portion sizes, new mac recipes and some new desserts using winter fruits. We came up with some pretty delicious ideas, both for Thanksgiving, and to add to our winter menu. We also may have had too good of a time playing around in the kitchen all day – we all went home in a slight lactose coma from the pounds of cheese we consumed.

Erin, Allison and Megan play around with new ingredients

Anyway, here’s what we’ve got for Thanksgiving: big platters of mac, any mac, to serve as a hot, gooey side dish (and lets be honest, the sides always outshine the turkey anyway). Our platters serve ten as a side, or 5 as a main course. We give a 20% discount on orders of 2 platters or more, so if you have a large family, you’re in luck. You can find out more about our platters on our catering page.

We’re also taking orders for two different pies for Thanksgiving: Our famous peanut butter pie, and our new banana creme pie! Both pies are $24, and you can place a pie order by giving us a call at 510 597 0400. Place your orders early, because there’s a good chance we’ll run out.

Onto our new winter menu…

We are super excited about our new mac and blue, because we’re using what we think is the world’s best blue cheese: Point Reyes Original Blue, and add some cracked black peppercorns and toasted walnuts. We were luckily enough to take a private tour of the beautiful Point Reyes farm before the restaurant opened, and it was pretty eye-opening. After watching the cheesemakers carefully mold great big wheels of fresh cheese, we got to hang out with the happiest-looking cows we’ve ever seen. We left pretty happy too, after the owners of Point Reyes treated us a feast that included samples of all their incredible cheeses.

Next we’ve got a new exchange student called Macximus. As the name implies, it’s a Greek mac. It’s super flavorful, and full of artichoke hearts, spinach, shallots and salty feta cheese. We also have a new veggie – Brussels sprouts! They’re roasted with bacon, and topped off with an apple cider vinaigrette and bacon bits.

And last but not least, a brand new apple crisp. Warm caramelized apples topped with a graham cracker and brown sugar crisp. Holy cow. It’s ridiculously good, especially if you add some ice cream to it.

We hope you’ll come in soon for a taste of our new menu items – or perhaps give us a call to order a pie or a platter for the holidays.

We almost forgot! If you want to try and win a free platter of classic mac, leave a comment below telling us your favorite Thanksgiving side dish. We’ll choose the winning comment Wednesday, November 9th, and announce it on our facebook page. Easy, huh?

Hey classmates, it’s official – summer is here. And even though school’s out, it’s the best time of year to be in homeroom.

Why, you ask? Because we have lots of new tasty stuff on the menu that is perfect for the sultry weather sweeping through the Bay Area.

When we first said we were opening a mac and cheese restaurant, a lot of people said that mac and cheese wouldn’t provide enough variation to sustain a restaurant. Well, they were wrong.

Megan Gordon, always smiling over a pot of mac and cheese.

We get lots of emails. And phone calls, facebook messages, tweets and even letters. You’ve got questions – that much is clear – and we want to give you answers. So here we go. Responses to your most frequently asked questions. If we’ve missed something, leave a comment and let us know! We’d hate to leave you hanging…

I really love your mac and cheese, but how come you don’t bake it?
Ah, a common misconception! We do bake our mac and cheeses. You can get any of our macs baked in our super high-powered oven with a crispy panko crust – all you have to do is ask. We decided to make the crispy breadcrumbs an add-on because during our recipe testing we discovered that there are lots of people out there who like their macs creamy.

Trailer mac with a side of minty peas

I have celiac disease, and I gotta know – how do you make your macs gluten-free, and why can’t I eat your vegan mac?
Here’s the deal. Our gluten-free macs are made with either quinoa or brown rice pasta and a béchamel sauce made with tapioca flour. Our entire kitchen staff is extremely careful when making the gluten-free macs to ensure they don’t get contaminated.

Tomas Torres-Tarver, the youngest of our kitchen crew.

Psst… Who’s the young kid back there in the kitchen? Is he old enough to be working here?
We get this all the time! And yes, he is. That’s Tomas. Tomas was number 98 out of 125 people we interviewed for our opening staff, and because of his passion and enthusiasm, we knew right away that we wanted to hire him. Although he started as a busser, Tomas quickly learned his way around our kitchen and is now right there on the line on our busiest nights. And by the way, he’s 20.

I heard you’re going to be on TV! When is it happening?
We are! The Cooking Channel filmed us for an episode of The United Tastes of America, hosted by Jeffrey Saad. They’re featuring our classic mac and trailer mac for a sequence that’s all about mac and cheese. It’s going to air in September sometime. We’ll let you know when we have the date.

Allison and Erin with Jeffrey Saad, host of United Tastes of America

So there you have it. Answers to some of the most common questions we get. But we know there’s more! Go ahead, ask a question below in the comments section, and we’ll be sure to get you an answer.

Thanks for reading! See you soon in homeroom

allison + erin

Daniel takes out a tray full of macs to hungry patrons.

Well folks, we did it.

A year after quitting our corporate jobs to follow our dream and open a restaurant – an exhausting year filled with planning, building, recipe-testing and wondering, “Are we crazy to leave our cushy desk jobs to open a mac and cheese restaurant?” We did it. And now, after six weeks of business, our greatest success has simultaneously been our biggest dilemma: we’re slammed!

We find ourselves sleeping very little these days, and having a never-ending list of things we want to do with not enough time to do them (this includes answering all of your emails, so forgive us for not responding in a timely manner). The amazing thing is, despite the 100 hour workweeks and grueling days on our feet, we couldn’t
be happier, and find ourselves missing the restaurant in the few moments we aren’t there.

Slowly but surely Homeroom is turning into a community—with a close-knit staff that we love hanging out with and regulars that we can’t wait to see. Despite our state of perpetual exhaustion, we feel like things couldn’t be better.

Ted drizzles mac the goat with California Olive Ranch olive oil

Since day one, we’ve rushed headfirst into figuring out how to make many more mac and cheeses per week than we ever thought possible. We’ve doubled our initialstaff (it now takes 25 people to run a restaurant smaller than our apartments), and devised new systems to speed up cooking in our tiny kitchen. We’ve also had to figure out how to keep our food consistent with so many new people cooking it, and how to stop running out of things like carrots, white cheddar and root beer with our extremely limited storage space. And maybe the toughest feat: how to deal with hungry crowds and long waits when we have very few seats. And oh, did we mention the complexities of training a staff when we’re still figuring out how to run a restaurant ourselves? In short, it’s been a bit rough.

Brian, one of our managers, pours a beer

Every Monday, on our “day off”, we get together with our awesome managers and brainstorm how to make the next week even better. And it does get better, but there’s still so much we want to do. The biggest change we’ve made was to switch from counter service to table service so you could have a relaxing dining experience without waiting in long lines for food. We’ve also listened customer requests and changed how our kitchen operates so we could accommodate add-ons to all our mac and cheeses (our favorite frequent request is bacon in the vegan mac). But there’s still so much more. Everything from adding hooks to the bar seating and soundproofing so it’s not so loud, to adding appetizers, changing menu items, and doing cool events on Monday nights.

In the kitchen with Ted and one of our kitchen managers, Joseph.

So thank you, to all of our customers who have made our first six weeks such a crazy success. And to everyone who said we were insane to open a restaurant that only serves mac and cheese, well, we’re glad you were wrong.

And one last thing! Lookout for new posts at least once a week, where you’ll find recipes from our amazing staff, inside looks into our kitchen, customer stories, and rants on just about anything that happens behind our scenes. If you have anything specific you’d like us to blog about, leave a comment and let us know, we’d love to hear from you! And if you haven’t already, sign up for email updates to stay in the loop.

It’s here.

That’s right, the time when you stop reading about our mac and cheese and actually come in and eat it.  After an exhilarating and exhausting year of fundraising, construction, recipe-testing, food events, legal hurdles, and good old-fashioned elbow grease, Homeroom is finally ready to open.

We feel bad that we’ve been so delinquent about posting recently, but it’s been an insanely busy few months.  Because we want Homeroom to have our own personal touch (and because we’re broke), we made all the tables, hand-painted the chairs, crafted shelves, built the bar, made our sign—we even created our own funky chandeliers.  As a result, it’s taken a bit more time than we had hoped, but the restaurant is also looking even better than we had ever dreamed.

We’re here all day, every day, prepping to open our doors.  It’s incredibly exhausting, but every evening we take a step back, look around, and feel incredibly lucky to have built something so incredible.  With wall-to-wall windows, the restaurant always feels airy and bright, and it’s fun to sit at the community table and watch neighbors walk by and poke their heads in with excitement.   It’s great to see people’s faces light up when they see our huge succulent wall, old-school card catalogue, or chalkboard map of California.  It’s even greater to see their faces light up when they hear about our macaroni and cheese, or taste a cookie from our new oven.

We recently hired an awesome staff of 13 from over 150 people that showed up for an open interview.  One of them even came bearing a homemade mac and cheese brunch (we hired him on the spot), while others told us great stories about places they have worked and the food they love to cook.   We were really impressed by all the great people that came out, and were only sorry we didn’t have more jobs for all the fabulous people that we met.  We’re having our very first staff meeting on Wednesday, and spend a lot of time thinking about how to make Homeroom a great place to work.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to iron out all the kinks and figure exactly where our food is coming from, and how to get it out piping hot and delicious.  Since we’ve never done this before, it’s pretty intimidating to try and train a staff when we’re not sure how best to do things ourselves.  Because of this, we’re going to do what we’re calling a super-soft opening . . .

Officially, we’ll open on February 14th with a special cheesy Valentine’s Day event. Buy tickets ($25) in advance for a beer/wine and mac pairing, where we’ll sample three different macs with three beers or three wines, plus dessert. Wanna come? click here to buy tickets now! We’re only doing one seating at 7pm for 42 people.

Then on February 15th, we’ll be open every day for lunch until we hit our stride (this may take 2 days or 2 weeks—we really don’t know), and then we’ll add dinner.  The best way to find our hours in the first few tumultuous weeks of opening is to join our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter.  We’ll be posting frequently, while still trying to update this site as well with events and specials.  Thanks so much for sticking with us, and we can’t wait to sit down for a meal with you soon!

And now, check out some photos of our progress:

Erin bakes the first batch of cookies in our new convection oven!

Allison plants hundreds of succulents in our giant wall.

Ema lounges on our newly upholstered banquettes

Zoe glues vintage library cards to the wall

The chandeliers we made from dozens of glass balls get hung from the ceiling

The sign that Uri made gets stained and sealed before being hung outside

The succulent wall gets hung in the dining room.

And the cabinets get hung behind the bar.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been watching the walls of Homeroom go up with astonishing speed.  As we see our dream being built, it’s hard to believe that it was almost exactly a year ago that we (Allison and Erin) met up in a café and decided to open a restaurant together (even harder to believe is that at that point we had known each other for only nine months).

Initially we’d meet up to throw around ideas, recipes, designs—there were so many things that we wanted our restaurant to be.  Months later, when we finally found the perfect location for our dream to take root, it came in the form of a completely empty box—a blank slate.  No walls.  No electricity.  No nothing.

The task of making a restaurant out of a big empty box is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.  Especially for people who have never done it before and have about 1/3 of the budget necessary to properly do such a thing.

We knew that we wanted our space to reflect the dual elements we love about the name Homeroom—the warmth of a room in one’s house as well as the playfulness of being a school-age kid.  Neither of us had ever designed anything before and had no idea how to successfully pull this off while simultaneously creating a functional kitchen and restaurant that comply with all the municipal codes.  This is where Keith and Marites came in.

Better known as Abueg & Morris Architects, Keith and Marites are the people responsible for turning our vague concepts into concrete realities.  Keith is a technical expert who helped us figure out how to create a functional kitchen in our tiny space, and who walked us through the complexities of making a restaurant comply with the building and health codes (as a side note, there are some really crazy rules lying around those code books).  Marites is the design guru who was able to understand our vision and come up with things like color schemes and lighting design to reflect the feeling we want the space to have.

There are so many little details that go into a restaurant that we would never have thought of had Keith and Marites not been there to walk us through it.  What height should tables and chairs be so that they are the most comfortable to eat at?  How do you make a bathroom handicap accessible?  What can you do to make a restaurant not too loud when people are trying to talk to one another?  All the details can make your head spin, and without experienced architects to guide us Homeroom may have been be one big fat disaster.

So after all of that guidance, what are some of the exciting things we’re in the process of building right now?  Well, the space is going to be filled with a combination of colors put together by Marites, which are the perfect blend of vintage charm and homey warmth.  We are going to have a partially open kitchen so that we can see all of our neighbors and friends while we cook for them, and so that our customers feel like they walked into our kitchen—and not just a restaurant.  And our 11-foot long community table is going to anchor the front of the restaurant and invite people to get to know each other. The photos below will give you a peek into what’s going on behind our taped up windows:

A shot of what Homeroom looks like right now, and what it'll look like in 2 short months.

Here we are, Allison on the left and Erin on the right, in front of the banquettes we scored from Ramblas. They obviously need some work.

This is the pass-through window that looks into the kitchen.

We have more photos of our progress on our facebook page! And we’ll keep the posts coming as the construction continues.