This Cheesy Bob Evans Store-Bought Side Dish Is A Total Skip In Our Mind

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Bob Evans is a beloved All-American chain restaurant with hundreds of locations across the Midwest and eastern United States. Like other successful chains, Bob Evans also sells many of its most popular menu items in frozen form, making it easier for customers to get their fix from home. And you'll find all the fan favorite comfort food side dishes from Bob Evans in the frozen section of the grocery store too. Tasting Table sampled several to figure out which Bob Evans side dishes are worth buying and which side dishes are best skipped. And, according to our taste test, Bob Evans' store-bought mac and cheese is better left behind.

The mac and cheese comes in a large microwavable tub that'll feed up to three people, so it's a convenient side for the whole family. And while Bob Evans uses whole ingredients with no preservatives, the sauce sure didn't taste like it. Upon visual inspection, the elbow noodles coated in creamy, gooey cheese sauce looked promising. They weren't too overcooked for a premade frozen product, and the sauce maintained its thickness, which was impressive.

However, the flavor of the cheese was far too artificial for our liking. Its orange hue was reminiscent of cheddar, but it tasted more like Cheez Whiz. The ultra-processed flavor was especially hard to ignore considering cheese is the focal point of this comforting side dish. In hindsight, even the sticky, gluey texture of the cheese sauce pointed to artificiality.

We weren't impressed by Bob Evans mac and cheese, but we weren't offended by it either. Customer reviews from Walmart, however, were absolutely appalled. One-star reviews cried false advertisement, with one customer raging, "Looks nothing like the picture on the box. It comes out mushy — resembles mashed potatoes both in appearance and texture !! Absolutely disgusting. Couldn't even distinguish a noodle in the slop." Several reviewers included photographs of the mac and cheese fresh out of the microwave, and many of them looked like cheese soup with one or two noodles floating around in it. 

If the cheese sauce was super tasty, it might be a saving grace. But it was somehow even worse than the texture. According to one disappointed customer, at best, Bob Evans mac and cheese "tastes like watery noodles with [a] very very slight taste of cheese." However, most grievances weren't as kind, complaining that the cheese tasted like chemicals, slightly sour, or just off in a more general kind of way. One user summed it up by succinctly stating, "The cheese on this (or 'bioengineered glop') was inedible." 

Considering just how many other brands offer frozen mac and cheese, there's bound to be a better option. Tasting Table ranked 18 different frozen mac and cheeses and Beecher's was definitely our favorite. Of course, you can always whip up your favorite brand of boxed mac and cheese, making it your own with any number of clever upgrades.