Kraft Mac & Cheese Everything Bagel Flavor is a menace

If you’re like me, you didn’t grow up with macaroni and cheese as a part of your Thanksgiving meal. (I grew up having red and green Jell-O with fruit in it because Rochester, New York, is secretly a city in the midwest.) But over the past few years, macaroni and cheese has become a staple of both Thanksgiving and Friendsgiving meals.

It’s fun to see different people’s takes on macaroni and cheese. What kind of pasta are they using? How cheesy is it? What’d they top it with? My wife makes an excellent mac and cheese. My sister-in-law does too.

What I’m guessing you won’t be eating on Thanksgiving is macaroni and cheese flavored with everything bagel seasoning. But don’t worry, Kraft is on it with Kraft Mac & Cheese Everything Bagel Flavor.

Where I found it

The everything bagel flavor is exclusive to Walmart. (It wasn’t supposed to go on sale until this past Monday, but I was able to preorder it last week and got my box yesterday. Preorders are sold out, but this flavor of mac and cheese might be available again on Friday.)

What I paid

A box of Kraft Mac & Cheese Everything Bagel Flavor will run you $1.58.

My thoughts

“That’s going to be awful,” Caitlin said to me when I showed her the box for everything bagel mac and cheese.

In retrospect, I should’ve trusted her instinct. In addition to making a fantastic real mac and cheese, she’s an expert at doctoring up a box of Annie’s with some pasta water to elevate it. (Our daughter eats a ton of Annie’s mac and cheese.)

There was a brief moment when I thought Kraft Mac & Cheese Everything Bagel Flavor was a good idea. That first bite felt balanced. Hey, maybe this is a smart idea, I thought to myself. But with each successive spoonful, I became more and more aware of the trauma I was inflicting on my taste buds.

The mac and cheese itself is fine. But the repeated onslaught of garlic flakes and onions flakes? It’s too much. I mourn for my breath. I can still taste them as I write this, despite doing my best to drown the flavor out with two cans of Coke Zero.

There’s a reason why a bagel shop will put an everything bagel in its own special bag, away from your egg or blueberry bagels. Even sesame bagels are trusted to play well with other bagels. But an everything bagel? They’re a delicious and destructive influence.

That flavoring doesn’t belong in mac and cheese. Mac and cheese is too innocent, too wholesome.

The scary part is I think the everything bagel mac and cheese could have been worse. Before dumping the cheese-and-seasoning packet into the pot, I gave it a shake to get everything to one side of the packet … only to have the top of the package rip off and for the packet itself to fly across our kitchen.

If you freeze-dried Garfield and he then exploded, you can imagine what this looked like. (Hey, we’re freeze drying everything these days.)

There was plenty of cheese-and-seasoning dust left in the packet to make this flavor of mac and cheese, but I worry about what it would’ve been like had I not had a near-catastrophic accident when preparing it.

“I don’t think it has to exist,” Caitlin said after trying a bite of the finished product.

Final verdict: SKIP

It’s too much. Humans were never meant to merge mac and cheese and everything bagel flavors. Everything Everywhere All at Once warned about the dangers of giving an everything bagel too much power. We should have listened.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to cleaning the kitchen.