Owner of macaroni and cheese eatery finds new spot next to Plaza

Jul. 21—Theo Gio is back with mac and cheese.

The first couple of weeks of the coronavirus pandemic knocked him out of his first macaroni and cheese restaurant on Guadalupe Street — a business first called Macalicious then renamed Theo Gio's Mac & Cheese.

Gio had planned to make a comeback, but he waited for the pandemic to settle down. Six months ago, he began looking for the perfect location and found a spot on the Plaza.

"We put everything in a storage and just waited for the right opportunity," Gio said early Wednesday morning at MacSantaFe. "It had always been part of what I intended to do — to be on the Plaza."

Gio opened MacSantaFe on Monday on the lower level of Paso de Luz, a downtown shopping center formerly called Plaza Galleria that is accessible from both San Francisco and Water streets.

"The first thing I noticed, I got off the elevator and saw this venue that could be very significant," Gio said.

What could make the center's small, lower-level area significant?

"My food," he replied.

Those familiar with the former Macalicious and Theo Gio's Mac & Cheese will recognize many of the 16 dishes on Gio's downtown menu.

"No recipe was revamped," he said.

What had been a lobster special is now a permanent menu item. He added a Hawaiian mac and a primavera mac, the latter featuring sweet baby peas, artichokes, spinach, tomato, mozzarella and Parmesan.

"I like straight cheddar for the standard mac and cheese," Gio said. "My favorite flavor is the aged dry blue cheese in the buffalo chicken."

MacSantaFe has soup and salad as well as artichoke and stuffed jalapeño appetizers. Gio also offers 11 choices of grilled cheese sandwiches.

"I've been selling more grilled cheese than mac and cheese so far," Gio said.

MacSantaFe has counter seating and a few tables along the walls outside the storefront. Gio said a few upholstered chairs will be removed and four more tables will be added in the open area.

Mac and cheese is a side dish at several high-end Santa Fe restaurants, but Gio decided to make it the main event when he opened Macalicious in 2017.

He discovered the magic of macaroni and cheese in his native Pittsburgh, where he owned MexiCasa for 13 years. Every year, he closed for two weeks. On the last day before the closure, he always had a private party for friends and family and served mac and cheese.

People marked their calendars for this party.

"Every year, people wanted more varieties," Gio said.

He moved to Santa Fe in 2015 and waited tables at Geronimo until he had enough money to open Macalicious.

He recalled the restaurant's last day, March 31, 2020.

"It became a ghost town," Gio said of the city at start of the pandemic. "Nobody knew what to expect. It was at the end of my lease."

But a comeback was inevitable.

"I'm glad to be back behind the wheel, doing this again," he said.