Featured on the cover of the June issue of Wine Spectator magazine and hailed inside for both of their restaurants, chef Duskie Estes, who co-owns Healdsburg's Bovolo and Santa Rosa's Zazu with husband John Stewart, just returned from a mac and cheese-off sponsored by the ubiquitous Food Network. Estes brought her ultimate comfort food, a mac 'n' cheese crowned with Bovolo's own house-made bacon and plumped with roasted cauliflower sauced with Clover cream, Bellwether Farms' cardmody cheese and Clover's medium cheddar. She also competed fiercely with a roasted artichoke stuffed with a Laura Chenel goat cheese 'n' mac dusted in herbes de provence. Are we the only ones getting hungry? Estes is legally constrained from saying how she did until the show airs in September, but allows that she's "happy but not thrilled." As for us, yes, we're just hungry.

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