Restaurant Week may be long gone, but memories of Zola’s Lobster with Fontina Macaroni and Cheese and Asparagus still linger, for good reason. While a few DCists thought the dish a bit bland, the flavors worked so well together that the dish begged for a second look.

For DCist’s lobster mac, we decided to increase the content of Fontina in the dish for a more oozy texture and fuller flavor. Rather than cook the lobster in the macaroni itself (which lends itself to tough and overdone lobster meat) we decided to poach it in butter and fold it in at the end. The result is an intensely rich nutty Fontina flavor that mingles nicely with the decadent and buttery lobster.