Kraft House No. 5 – Spiciest Dish in Columbus Series

We review spicy things and corn dogs, but little known fact is that our third favorite food group is mac and cheese.

Kraft House No. 5 one of the few restaurants slapped in the absolute center of downtown Powell. With big ol’ front steps and a rustic-ish interior, it was decently crowded for a weeknight during happy hour. We popped in because whenever there is a hot pepper in the title of a dish, we get a bit excited. Top billing means most important, right?

Let us first examine the other contenders.

KH5 Nachooooooos.

These are the KH5 Nachos, which when they come out you realize could just be called K5 nachos because they are a mountain of a dish. (K5 is located in the Karakoram region of the Himalaya. It’s the 11th highest mountain in the world. The more you know.) Stacked with jalapeños, chorizo, habanero cheese, pico de gallo, refried beans and cilantro lime sour cream, these nachos are legit. The chips are nice and crunchy but don’t dissolve under the heaviness of the cheese or refried beans. A tiny sniffle and a refusal from the Lady of the Farm to eat a raw jalapeño got my hopes up that maybe, just maybe, the dish with “habanero” in the title was going to enter the top 20.

Mac. And. Cheeeeese.

[Best David Attenborough voice] Down in front of the mountains of the KH5 Nachos lies another spicy treasure of the Kraft House, the Habanero Mac & Cheese [/voice ends]. That’s right, double the habanero cheese on this evening as we dipped our forks into the Habanero Mac & Cheese. It’s a simple dish. Cavatappi, habanero cheese, and breadcrumbs on top. The first word in this dish is Habanero, a pepper that is 100,000 to 350,000 SHU. The Habanero is a pepper that many will find too spicy and for us is at the top of peppers we will eat whole. All this knowledge swirling around, it was time to see what this spicy dish had to offer.

Record scratch. I was bamboozled. Hoodwinked. The habanero is a hoax! Kraft House No. 5 had pulled a fast one on old Ron and there was nothing I could do about it. I sat, chewing the noodles more than usual, hoping that maybe I’d just gotten a hidden habanero, but nothing. The Lady of the Farm snagged some as well, no issue. No nose sweat from her.

Then I picked up on something. Actually nope, I was wrong. It was just a breadcrumb getting stuck in my throat. With no hot sauce on hand, I unloaded half a shaker of black pepper onto the Mac and Cheese, just to feel alive again. Horrified at the small pyramid of black pepper that now graced the top of the dish, our waiter asked if everything was alright. “It’s FINE” I snarled. As our eye contact waned, I Kirby’ed the mountain of black pepper and mild pasta, threw my head back and released a black pepper demon from within me (a la Constantine).

Yo, but these nachos thoooooooough.

NACHOS.

Nachos completely gone, I glared at the “Habanero” Mac & Cheese. “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE,” I yelled at the macaroni spirals. “NoT eVeRyThInG nEeDs To Be SpIcY” they mocked. They were right. Not everything NEEDS to be spicy, but when you roll out the “Habanero” red carpet in the name of a dish, we expect more. As a dish, this goes to the bottom. Not the full on bottom, but #49, just above the least crazy “Crazy Noodles” from Siam Orchid and just below “El Diablo Lite” Burger at Melt Bar and Grilled.

You can find these wonderful nachos at Kraft House No. 5 at 5 Liberty St, Powell, OH 43065.

Look below for more in our spiciest dish in Columbus series and hit us up if you have any suggestions that are not already on our list!

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Did you know we released our first hot sauce? It’s a Serrano Garlic that even at a 2/7 heat level is spicier than this dish. Feel free to buy some and take it with you to pour on when you eat the Habanero Mac & Cheese.

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