larsonjt2@lopers.unk.edu

In college there are some meals that qualify as necessities, such as instant ramen, TV dinners, cereal and mac and cheese. For those who enjoy mac and cheese, The Crafty Dog is definitely a restaurant to check out.

The Crafty Dog isn’t like your typical sports bar that just serves a good burger. The Crafty Dog offers a wide selection of different mac and cheese dishes and grilled cheese. 

The Jambalaya Mac menu item is mac and cheese with chicken, andouille sausage, red pepper, green onion, crispy crawfish and Cajun breadcrumbs. The portions of mac and cheese to the sausage, chicken, peppers and onions was well-balanced. The ingredients were evenly distributed, which was nice. The crawfish was deep fried, but that ended up making the crawfish rubbery and having little to no flavor. The cheese sauce had the nice Cajun heat that you would expect from jambalaya. The spices weren’t too overpowering, which allowed me to still taste the other ingredients. All the mac and cheese was served in a cast iron bowl so it was nice and warm. 

And what sports bar doesn’t doesn’t serve wings? The Crafty Dog has a wide variety of sauces to try like buttery hot sauce, garlic Parmesan, Korean BBQ, honey sriracha, alfredo and peanut butter and jelly. I wasn’t daring enough to try the peanut butter and jelly wings, so I tried the garlic Parmesan wings. There was an even distribution of garlic powder and Parmesan cheese, so it didn’t overtake the flavor of the chicken. If I return to The Crafty Dog, I would try some of their other wing flavors.

This is definitely a restaurant that I would enjoy going back to. The food was great and the service was friendly. The Crafty Dog is a fantastic place to hang out and get some great food.