My earliest memories are of cooking; setting up a small table next to my mother in the kitchen at age 3, watching her every move, imitating how she dashed her spices and how she stirred her pot. If we were baking, she would add her ingredients to her bowl and then pass them to me so that I could add them to mine. At relatives’ houses I was allowed to cook steaks while still in kindergarten and by the time I was in junior high I would prepare food for my father and his friends as they watched the game: roasted duck and collard greens. My whole life growing up was spent selling food on the street and cooking every holiday.

In 2014, I opened Allie B’s Cozy Kitchen in Albany’s West Hill Neighborhood, which is now the Capital Region’s oldest operating soul food restaurant. It didn’t take long to become the Capital Region’s Queen of Southern Cuisine, with Food Network appearances, cooking classes and beloved dishes requested by countless organizations, dignitaries and politicians all the way up to the Governor’s office. Allie B’s Cozy Kitchen’s menu is authentic Southern soul food, one of America’s founding cuisines, and universally loved by all. And while everyone who enters the restaurant finds a dish that they love, their own personal favorite, a consistent theme runs common among all patrons: The Macaroni And Cheese is truly The GREATEST! When one first experiences it, a flood of memories fill their thoughts. One bite and they are taken back in time to their childhood, to a simpler time in life, when their excitement over their mother or grandmother preparing their favorite dish evokes The Greatest emotional reaction; and the purest sense of joy and satisfaction.

This same experience can now be felt at 26 local Market 32/Price Chopper stores as Allie B’s famous Macaroni and Cheese, Mac and Cheese so Good it Brings Us All Together, is now available in the Food Fare/Deli department. Every day of the week customers can purchase this delightful and savory product both hot and ready to eat, or cold to be taken home and enjoyed later. Macaroni and cheese is an American classic, first brought here by Thomas Jefferson and James Hemings, an enslaved African American, and also the first American Master of French Cuisine. Now this dish is beloved and memorialized by all families. But this particular macaroni and cheese, Allie B’s Mac And Cheese, belongs to us, the Capital Region – it is our signature dish that we will be known for. Come and experience The Greatest!

I’m excited to be visiting the local stores below to sample my mac and cheese: stop in and say hi!