]]> http://homeroom510.com/the-homeroom-drive-thru/feed/ 26 http://homeroom510.com/the-homeroom-drive-thru/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Homeroom/~3/nVumLx1hHTM/ http://homeroom510.com/so-much-to-celebrate-at-homeroom/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:48:45 +0000 admin http://homeroom510.com/?p=781 We can’t believe it. Somehow, it’s already been two years since Homeroom opened its doors. Two years of making macs, making friends, and turning our little corner in Oakland into a truly special place.

Homeroom, 2 years ago

Pre-Order the Homeroom Mac + Cheese Cookbook!

Allison and Erin at Homeroom's pre-opening party

We’re also taking pre-orders for your platters and pies for Thanksgiving. They’re the perfect companion to your holiday turkey!

But first, the menu. We are so extremely excited about this awesome new menu. Check out what’s new:

- A new exchange student – The Sriracha mac! This spicy mac has havarti, ginger butter, sliced scallions and sriracha. It’s seriously delicious – and even better when you add grilled chicken.  YUP, we said it! Grilled chicken is now available to add to any mac.

- Smokey Bacon Mac: Just what you want when it’s cold. It’s bold and rich, with smoked cheddar, jack cheese and plenty of bacon. It would also make a perfect platter to pair with turkey for Thanksgiving.

- And last but not least, introducing our Ivy Leaguer: The Truffle Mac! No truffle oil here – our truffle mac has flecks of real back truffles, mixed with creamy gouda, sauteed mushrooms and fresh thyme. So why do we call it the Ivy Leaguer? Well, it’s the most expensive mac on our menu. We try not to price any mac over $10, but when real truffles are involved, it’s pretty near impossible.

We also have a new grilled chicken sandwich with chipotle mayo, butternut squash soup, bread pudding for dessert and a slew of new beers and wines. We even have a new soft drink called key lime pie (citrusy, gingery, refreshing and delicious).

Speaking of soft drinks, we’re now carrying Wade’s Root Beer in bottles! Based on our homemade root beer, Erin’s husband took his recipe and bottled it –and wait until you see his cool new label. You can read more about Uri’s root beer at wadessodas.com.

On to the holidays…

It’s time to pre-order your Thanksgiving platters and pies! Any of our macs can be made into a platter, and each one feeds 10 as a side dish, or 5 as a main couse. They are super easy to heat up – just stick it in the oven for 30 minutes at 400F. Order yours today and pick it up the day before Thanksgiving. Find out more about platters here: homeroom platters

You can also order a whole peanut butter pie for Thanksgiving – creamy, rich and peanut buttery. Give us a call or come on in to place your order.

And in case you’re looking for a cheesy gift this holiday season, order a homeroom gift card online...

Please note our new hours! We are reverting back to winter hours, which means we’ll be closed at 9pm on the weekdays.

That’s all for now. We hope you all make it in soon to try all of our new dishes.

allison + erin

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.

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.