Life has a way of throwing curveballs at truly inconvenient times. Among them: getting into a fight with your significant other moments before you arrive at a friend’s party, finding out that the deadline for your project was moved up a week, and falling head-over-heels in love with a restaurant right before it is about to close and relocate.
The latter just happened to me. My first time in the dining room of Mac’s Kitchen and Bar in Rossville, I immediately understood why people love this place. The owners, Brian McDonald and Jess Revels, have built something truly special. The restaurant is a sustainable partner with local farmers, sourcing from and building relationships with the people growing their food. They have also built a sense of community.
So when the news broke that Mac’s would be temporarily closing, people were heartbroken. Mac’s Kitchen and Bar announced the last day at its McFarland Avenue location will be Tuesday.
“High rent and utilities have led us to look for a new home for our silly little dream,” the restaurant said in an email newsletter. “It’s not goodbye forever, we will be back. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. We have a lot of opportunities in front of us, and we are so grateful for every one of you who has supported us from the beginning.”
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I spoke with McDonald and Revels at the restaurant. They said they have a new space they are in the works of confirming. They will take a few months off to do pop-ups and collaborations with other restaurants and bars in the area.
Anyone who has the pleasure of working with them knows their food is magic.
“We grew up eating crabcakes,” said McDonald, a Boston native, so he put a spin of the classic on the menu.
I would not have expected mushrooms as the substitute, but the lion’s mane cake was phenomenal. The mushrooms were from Gowin Valley Farms, the biscuit crumbs added a textural, crunchy element, while the Old Bay gave this aquatic sensation where I really believed I was eating something from the sea.
“Just being landlocked like we are,” McDonald said, “I want that smell of Old Bay.”
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The herb aioli and pickled mustard seeds added such a tart finish, I may or may not have used the word transformative when I was complimenting the chef on the dish. Everything you could want from a crabcake, while not actually being a crabcake.
The sourdough ravioli had such a great chew to it, filled with creamy butternut squash puree with labneh and brown butter sauce. Fried sage added a little crisp structural element under the grated cheese. I paired this with a South African wine, a Blooming White blend that braids together chenin blanc and chardonnay among others. It was sweet and floral and complemented the flavors of each dish.
And because cabbage is having a moment, I also ordered a whole plate of it. It was roasted to perfection, so it had a nice charred crunch to the edges. It was served over yogurt with a drizzle of honey and a sprinkling of chili crisp and herbs.
For dinner we had the seasonal dessert, the cutest little Christmas tree cake, made with olive oil and satsuma.
It’s clear Revels and McDonald have a special dynamic. He’s a water sign, she’s fire. She tells me he’s always putting out her fires — literally. She recounted a time when they were catering a wedding and a heavy pan of mashed potatoes knocked the sterno burner off the table and it bounced right onto a man’s shoe and promptly caught fire. Revels tried to grab a serving spoon to beat down the flames until that caught fire too. She ran inside the catering kitchen to alert McDonald, who calmly walked out with a wet towel and extinguished the fire.
That water and fire energy will serve them well in their next ventures.
Next up, a five-course prix fixe New Year’s Eve dinner ending with a champagne toast. Tickets are still available on the Mac’s website. Revels told me by phone that they will have oysters and red Gulf shrimp thanks to their friend from Jones Fruit Farm. Those friends have a little two-seater plane and fly down to Alabama to get some fresh seafood and will be bringing up bushels of oysters and shrimp to grace the tables of Mac’s on New Year’s Eve. There will be New York strips from Lowe Cattle Co. and, of course, Revels’ fabulous desserts will be on the menu, too.
“We’re just going to keep filling the bellies and the souls,” Revels told me. “We just have to pivot.”
Contact Lyric Lewin at llewin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6215. Subscribe to her weekly newsletter, “What to Eat Next,” at timesfreepress.com/eat.
Photo by Lyric Lewin / The cabbage dish and acclaimed Lion’s mane mushroom cake is paired with a South African wine at Mac’s.