After winning second and third place in last year’s Michigan Mac & Cheese Festival in Kalamazoo, Katrina Wolack came back this year with reinforcements.
Wolack is the owner of Say Cheese 810 in the Flint Farmers’ Market. Last year, one of their signature dishes, the Bacon Baddie, was awarded. This year, she brought a second dish to give her team more chances to win the top prize.
“I was so determined this year to win first,” Wolack said. “I went in knowing a little bit about the competition and how they ran things. Every Saturday I make birria, and we do a birria mac that is just so popular. So my brain said, ‘Oh, we’re gonna take birria, and we’re gonna win this year with birria mac.’ And then of course I took the Bacon Baddie too because it was second place last year. We get there and start cranking things out, and Bacon Baddie ended up being the winner this year.”
The first place recognition backs up what many customers say. Since Say Cheese 810 opened in June of 2024, the Bacon Baddie has become a favorite among customers in the Farmers’ Market. The dish includes bacon, cheddar, mozzarella, breadcrumbs, hot honey, and barbecue sauce. Wolack learned to make the hot honey when she worked for Flint Social Club, a nonprofit social enterprise owned by Tony Vu that used to have a stall in the Flint Farmers’ Market and provides support for food business startups and chefs.
“I think all our macs are good, but that Bacon Baddy is where it’s at, right down to the hot honey,” she said. “I learned how to make hot honey my own way through working at Social Club and watching them make all of their sauces from scratch. That was something I had never done before. So here, we make all of our sauces now because of that, and everybody comes back saying, ‘Your hot honey is so good.’ It’s those little things that you wouldn’t think of that just kind of make something good into great.”
And, just because Wolack had to get a temporary food license that lasts 14 days to enter the competition, she entered and won another one the same week. Organizers of the Mac & Cheese Festival also did the Taco & Tequila Festival on August 28 and Wolack took home first place in that as well.
“I was like, wait a minute, I can make tacos too, so we ended up entering Taco Fest too and on Saturday we found out we won both festivals,” she said. “It was like a dream.”
Cooking tacos is actually close to Wolack’s heart as a chef. Her family has always been in the restaurant business and a significant amount of her experience earlier in her life was in cooking Mexican food.
“I started following my mom around the restaurant when I was about five years old, and literally never left,” Wolack said. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever done, either in the kitchen, behind the bar, or waiting tables. It’s been my life.
When she was about 35, Wolack and a friend opened their own business, Amigas Catering. They built up a client base and began getting more and more gigs, but while Wolack was experienced in the restaurant and food business, that experience of owning her own company also taught her what she didn’t know. That’s why she sought out Vu and Flint Social Club.
“It (the catering business) was amazing, but I didn’t know enough, and I realized as soon as we started getting tons of gigs, ‘Holy moly, what am I doing?,’” she said. “So I got a hold of Tony Vu, and I was like, ‘I need to learn more about food businesses and other types of foods.’ All I knew how to cook was Mexican food. And Tony said, ‘Come apprentice with me.’ So I came to Flip Social Club and started cooking with Chef Kyle (Dyer), Chef Nate (Campbell), Jessalyn Taylor, and it was amazing. I learned so much about Vietnamese food, about brunch cooking, about burgers. It was like a whole new world for me.”
The environment at Flint Social Club also helped her get more experience putting together different menus, promoting pop-ups, and doing other front of the house things. Eventually, that led to an opportunity of her own at the Farmers’ Market. The leadership at the Market was interested in having a stall that featured a ‘build-your-own mac and cheese’-style business and wanted to know if Wolack would be interested.
“It was like, ‘Holy moly!’,” she said. “I went home and cried. It was the biggest blessing. It wasn’t part of my plan in my brain. I guess it was just part of the universe’s plan.”
Wolack went to work coming up with and perfecting a menu. In her own home, she had her husband Dan and their six children as the perfect taste testers as she experimented with sauces, toppings, and noodles.
“I was always saying, ‘What do you guys think? Grade it 1-5,’” Wolack said. “Mac and cheese wasn’t something I had a lot of experience with at first, but I came to a recipe I was super happy with and they all said, ‘This is amazing!’ It just kept evolving from there. We decided to start baking noodles. We added different meats and toppings. And here we are today.”
Now, their menu includes different types of cheeses, proteins, and toppings, homemade sauces, a few custom creations, and cheesy potatoes. The menu also frequently includes specials and other creative additions. Part of what inspires that creativity is being in an environment at the Market with other food businesses and chefs who all collaborate and learn from each other.
“I still see Flint Social Club people as like our little gang,” Wolack said. “I’m still going to Nate (who owns 810 Tings) all the time asking him for advice, asking him for pans, asking him about recipes. And Chef Kyle who’s down at MaMang, I’m always, like, ‘What do you think about this? What do you think about putting the chicken this way? What do you think about making the sauce this way?’ We’re still coming together, shooting ideas off each other, learning, growing. It really still has that vibe. We became kind of a cooking gang. It’s definitely a community, so it was like I moved here to this stall from being over there (where Flint Social Club was). I always just say, ‘I just moved neighborhoods and I met new neighbors.’”
The Market environment also allows Wolack to source ingredients. They use fresh produce from market vendors, cheeses from Hills’ Cheese, and they’ve done weekly pop-up events at Market Tap above the market. They’ve also included items from the Gourmet Apple Cart in the market in some of those pop-ups.
“I just couldn’t think of a better place to be than in the Market,” Wolack said.
Say Cheese 810 has a Facebook page where people can find information about events, special menu items, and more. They also offer catering. They’re open on Farmers’ Market Days, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wolack is grateful for the many loyal, returning customers they’ve connected with in the short time they’ve been open, and also for the support from her family, particularly her husband, who is a fixture at the counter on Market days for the business.
“I still feel like I’m kinda dreaming here, you know?,” she said. “My husband, he was an electrician for 20 years. We have six kids. I would go bartend at night and he worked during the day, and this was always a dream. At nighttime when we laid in bed, it was like, ‘One day I’m gonna open my own little food place,’”\ and he would probably be sick and tired of hearing how many times I’d say it. And then a couple years ago when this started, and it just took off, I was like, ‘Holy moly, I need help.’ And here we are today, so thankful. He couldn’t leave, because this started going crazy. And he’s like my biggest cheerleader, too. I’ll cook and I can hear him saying something about the business, something about his wife. So it’s pretty cool. We’re trying our best, and we hope everybody loves it.”
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