The 9 Best Mac & Cheese Dishes You Can Order At A Chain Restaurant, According To Reviews

Macaroni and cheese is one of those dishes that every restaurant should have on its menu, for a few reasons. For one thing, it can be as simple or as complex as the chef wants it to be. Additionally, any dish with cheese and pasta as its main ingredients is sure to be a hit. Adults and kids alike love it. If there's one goal a chain restaurant should have, it's making the whole family happy, and however you prepare it, macaroni and cheese is the side dish most likely to do that. Sometimes, chain restaurant sides are even better than the entrées. The items on this list certainly give any burger a run for its money.

On this list, you'll find down-home basics with classic ingredients like elbow pasta and cheddar or velveeta cheese. There are also sophisticated blends of funky and creamy cheeses. The absolute best cheeses for mac and cheese is a long and varied list, and many are represented here. Macaroni and cheese is one of those dishes that's excellent whether you're eating it in the highbrow world of fine dining or doing something as commonplace as picking up takeout. Here are the best mac and cheese dishes you can order at chain restaurants.

When the whole restaurant is built around noodles, you can probably trust the pasta to be good. In fact, we here at The Daily Meal have called Noodles & Company one of the restaurant chains that serve the best pasta. Of all the menu items? The Buffalo Chicken Ranch Mac & Cheese from Noodles & Company goes the extra mile. We're already working with a base of elbow noodles in a cheddar and jack cheese sauce — that's a classic start. Noodles & Company then ups the ante by adding chicken crusted in parmesan, crispy onions, scallions, and a buffalo and ranch drizzle.

If you've never bitten into a buffalo wing, then immediately eaten a spoonful of mac and cheese, you're missing out on one of life's great pleasures. It's similar to watching a sunrise over a seashore, or hearing a basketball swish through a net. Or, as one excited Redditor said about Noodle & Co.'s buffalo chicken mac: "It's delicious," with a curse word modifier attached. Noodles & Company understands the beautiful pairing of buffalo chicken and cheese, and the end result is this Buffalo Chicken Ranch Mac & Cheese dish with just the right amount of sauciness and heat.

There's ordinary lobster mac and cheese, and then there's the kind that truly lives up to the name — this is the latter. Legal Sea Foods makes a show-stopping mac and cheese served in the shell of the lobster, with big, meaty chunks of the crustacean lurking in the pasta. How does Legal Sea Foods achieve this presentation? Well, it's not that it's difficult, it just takes effort. Basically, the cooks here start by boiling a lobster and making a fresh batch of mac and cheese using cavatappi. Then they take the meat out of the lobster, combine the meat with the mac, and then delicately stuff the whole mixture back in the shell. Of course, such a decadent dish demands a topping, and this gets a mixture of breadcrumbs, Ritz crackers, and herbs. That all gets finished under a broiler for a nice crust on top, and there you have it: one of the most photogenic macaroni and cheese plates in the world.

One reviewer on Yelp confirmed that the dish is massive and incredibly rich, while another said they couldn't recommend it enough. Meanwhile, comments on Facebook marvel over the dish's impressive aesthetic. Legal Sea Foods' Lobster Mac & Cheese is a sight to behold, even in social media photos. It's a dish where the vibrant colors accurately represent the big taste.

There's a lot to be said for a mac and cheese that utilizes cavatappi, especially when the noodles are exactly al dente. Those longer spirals hold a lot of cheese, but the pasta's not so lengthy that you have to twirl or slurp. Outback Steakhouse's Steakhouse Mac & Cheese puts the twisty noodles to good use with a creamy sauce and a breadcrumb mixture, meaning forkfuls of this stuff have great texture variance. Whether you pair it with one of Outback Steakhouse's steaks or not, the dish comes in two sizes. You can order it as a side for one diner or as a platter that serves between four and six people.

Some people on Reddit prefer Outback's old mac and cheese recipe, but don't sleep on the steakhouse mac and cheese as it exists today. Nostalgia can dull our taste buds sometimes. Outback is a steakhouse that pays attention to its sides, and this is a good plate of pasta. One commenter on Facebook said that this was their "favorite mac and cheese of all," while another said, "eating this makes my heart happy." If that doesn't indicate the ultimate comfort food, we don't know what does. 

Boston Market sets its mac and cheese apart by using rotini pasta. The reasoning, according to the menu, is because "spirals hold more cheese." We can get behind that. Elbow pasta might be traditional, but variety is the spice of life, and more cheese on our mac and cheese is what we want out of life. Rotini's pretty easy to stab with a fork, which makes the journey from plate to mouth easier.

One Boston Market enthusiast on Reddit said that this dish "absolutely slaps," while another nostalgic fan praised the hint of funk in the dish. That person speculated that the taste is thanks to bleu cheese in the sauce. However, another person claiming to have a copy of Boston Market's recipe argued that the taste was thanks to dry mustard. Whatever gives this side dish its unique flavor, we're always going to be excited about a restaurant putting real effort into macaroni and cheese. Nothing against your basic staples like velveeta or cheddar, but anything that goes against the grain is worth highlighting.

Any self-respecting list of good mac and cheese dishes must include fried mac and cheese balls. The first person to look at a pot of Kraft blue box and think, "I bet I could deep fry that" was a true innovator, a real culinary hero. At The Cheesecake Factory, these gloriously decadent spheres come served over a bed of marinara sauce. If being served in sauce sounds odd to you, don't worry — it's a flavor match. The acidity of the tomato is an excellent counterbalance to the rich butteriness of the pasta. It's the same principle as mozzarella sticks served with a ramekin of marinara.

If you're going to The Cheesecake Factory with your taste buds fixed on macaroni and cheese, you might want to stick with the Fried Mac and Cheese balls. Reviews of the regular macaroni painted the dish as pretty mid. This fried plate, though? Hey, it's hard to screw up fried mac and cheese. Frankly, any mediocre dish can probably be improved with a shell of breading and a dunk in the fryer.

This appetizer has plenty of fans. YouTuber Kegon Lifestyle TV gave the fried mac and cheese a 10 out of 10, while one Redditor proclaimed that they wanted to kiss the chef after eating this dish. Ah, the sensuousness of cheese.

Cheese fans rejoice at this one. Capital Grille's Lobster Mac 'N' Cheese has a blend of mascarpone, havarti, Parmesan, and cream cheese. Then the chefs sprinkle on a finish of white cheddar and Grana Padano crust, just in case there wasn't enough cheese already. What an ensemble of cheeses! Mascarpone and cream cheese are going to provide a lot of creaminess, while havarti adds the all-important cheese pull. White cheddar, Parmesan, and Grana Padano provide some body, funk, and nuttiness. An intricate harmony is being sung in this dish.

Oh, and lest we forget — there's lobster in the pasta, too. Talk about decadence, especially when paired with, say, a porcini-rubbed ribeye with balsamic. That's rich living. If that sounds like a case of eyes too big for stomachs, the lobster mac and cheese can honestly be an entrée on all its own. This is definitely a dish worth the splurge at Capital Grille.

This is a favorite for a lot of people. One enthusiast on Reddit encouraged people to "absolutely, positively get the lobster mac and cheese." In a separate thread, another Reddit commenter raved about Capital Grille's mac and cheese. In fact, they praised it so much that they felt the need to add a disclaimer saying they weren't hired by the steakhouse to shill.

What screams comfort food more than a three-piece and a biscuit with a side of mac and cheese? Popeyes is a great fast food destination for rustic cooking, and the Homestyle Mac & Cheese is hearty enough to earn its "homestyle" label. Both butter and cream go into the cheese sauce, and the whole mixture gets finished under a broiler with shredded cheddar. This creates a kind of layer effect in the cheese — no breadcrumbs, but a kind of shell on top, then the creamy cheese sauce and pasta in the middle. Pretty sophisticated for a place with a drive-thru window, not that we doubted the Louisiana kitchen for a second.

If you check what people are saying on the internet, the move here really seems to be the addition of shredded cheddar cheese before toasting the pasta. That's a huge point in this dish's favor. We agree with the Reddit user who said that this is one of the best fast food macaroni and cheeses out there. If you're a fan of the spicy chicken at Popeyes, mac and cheese is a wonderful way to give your tongue a break from the heat.

A little truffle oil is a great way to gussy up macaroni and cheese. Smith & Wollensky's Truffled Mac & Cheese is a rich, creamy accompaniment to any main dish. There's also a hint of citrus here that livens things up. Panko breadcrumbs top the whole mixture off, lending an almost gratin-like quality to the dish. Don't go in here expecting the blue box stuff you fell in love with as a kid. This is a tasty concoction all its own. At its core, though? It's still a really good, classic macaroni and cheese. When we at The Daily Meal did our ultimate ranking of steakhouse mac and cheese, Smith & Wollensky took the top spot on our list.

One Reddit user called the pasta "god sent," and that was in response to a comment pithily referring to Smith & Wollensky's truffle mac as plain old mac and cheese. Some devotees of this dish will not stand for slander, it seems. Another commenter in the same thread said that they always get the mac and cheese, no matter which main course they order.

Maybe best known as a brand of frozen macaroni and cheese you can grab at your local grocery store, Beecher's Handmade Cheese also has cafés. Getting mac and cheese from an artisanal cheesemaker is rarely a bad idea, and Beecher's delivers the goods. If you're near a Beecher's café, check out the "World's Best" Mac & Cheese. The quotation marks are from Beecher's directly — it seems that you're supposed to decide for yourself whether or not that punctuation is necessary. The cheeses here are Beecher's Flagship Cheese and Just Jack, but the flavor profile goes deeper. Smoky and spicy chipotle peppers bring some depth, with a touch of lime juice and apple cider vinegar to balance things out.

Reading an ingredient list and imagining how good life must be for the people who can regularly hit a Beecher's café is one thing. Where's the evidence from those actual people? Well, there's plenty of enthusiasm on the internet about this mac and cheese. One person on Reddit said that, having eaten both the frozen product and what was served at the café, they couldn't tell the difference between the two. Rave reviews on Reddit, artisanal knowledge behind the cheese — maybe there's something to this "world's best" claim after all.