3 New Kraft Mac and Cheese Flavors Are Like Fine Dining from a Box

Has being an adult ruined Kraft Mac & Cheese for you? Like, when you’re a kid and you’ve had a limited number of experiences, weird, skinny little noodles coated in bright orange cheese sauce are like manna from heaven. Once your palate has matured, it can be slightly harder to conjure the same sort of excitement for pasta and powdered cheese. Kraft is addressing that mac age gap with a line of Restaurant Edition mac and cheeses in three flavors. And they sound pretty darn good.

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Hey, I’m fine with regular Kraft Mac & Cheese, but by all means, tell me more!

Don’t get me wrong, we love regular ol’ Kraft Mac & Cheese. In our opinion it’s still the fifth best boxed mac and cheese at the grocery store (and there’s a lot of mac and cheese at the grocery store). And in the past, Kraft’s efforts to upgrade a classic have been highly successful: our two favorite grocery store mac and cheeses are varieties Kraft Deluxe.

So what are these new Kraft mac and cheese flavors?

We’re looking at Parmesan Pesto, Romano Cacio e Pepe, and Monterey Jack Caramelized Onion. And it isn’t just the flavors that got zhuzhed up. All the Restaurant Edition Kraft flavors have been paired with “complementary” pasta shapes, according to a press release. The Parmesan Pesto flavor is made with gemelli noodles, the Cacio e Pepe is made with pipette noodles, and the Monterey Jack Caramelized Onion is made with cavatappi noodles. The purports to have tested more than 40 flavors before landing on these combos.

Why “restaurant edition” and why now? Well, it’s a sign of the times, guys…

If you’ve eaten out lately, I’m sure it didn’t escape your attention that it’s gotten really expensive. Like, even fast food is pricey as hell. Kraft is catering to people who are accustomed to elevated flavors but might be eating at home until conditions improve (assuming conditions improve). These new Kraft Mac & Cheese flavors, which are hitting grocery stores this month, will retail for $3.49 for a 9.5 oz box, which the brand points out is actually more food than the traditional blue box (which is 7.25 oz).

Which new Kraft mac and cheese are you most excited to try? I’m going rogue and grabbing the Monterey Jack Caramelized Onion one first.

About the Author

Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks. Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown. What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction. Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home. Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.