Soupesoup vs. Soupe Café...

....Hot Comfort for a Cold Winter Day




Soupesoup
Montreal, QC
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7 out of 10


Soupe Café
Montreal, QC
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6 out of 10

A good soup is a tricky thing. I'm not talking Lipton and Campbells. In culinary school, one of the first sections is on stocks. A good stock makes a good soup. So I set off on my first Midnight Poutine culinary adventure in search of extraordinary soup.

What I found was Soupesoup and Soupe Café working so hard to improve the days of all those Montrealers who, like me, think winters here need an emergency exit.

Are the soups extraordinary? Sometimes they are.

Soupesoup originated as a quaint little café on Duluth and has since expanded to not 2, but 6 locations in Montreal. The atmosphere is relaxed, welcoming and chaleureuse. Except when it gets busy. Then it seems under-staffed and over-crowded.

Soupe Café has just one location right next to the Atwater Market on Notre-Dame. A completely different atmosphere from Soupesoup, this restaurant is cute and retro, with a few chairs around circular white tables. Refridgerators on the side of the restaurant hold fresh and frozen soups for convenient take-out, or you can scoop your own choice of the 6 daily hot soups into small, medium or large bowls, or take-out containers.


FIRST, DESSERT: I had wanted to try Soupesoup for months. After stumbling into the location on St-Viateur last year late one afternoon, when all the soup was gone, I found the pouding au chomeur...and that was such a good day. The maple syrup and brown sugar in the warm butter sauce soaked perfectly into the soft pudding cake.

Simple decadence.

When I finally got back for soup, my expectations were high. Sure, it was the middle of summer. A 30+ day, but I ordered a hot soup. Not a room temperature soup. It was clearly called a "hot soup" on the board. After seeing it sit on the counter for 10 minutes while my fellow diner's sandwich was made, I knew it wasn't going to be what I wanted. The server was nice enough to take it back and heat it in the microwave for me...but then forgot about it and left it in the microwave. I went to the counter and asked for the soup back...they stared blankly...the soup in the microwave?? Oh, right.

By then it was, again, not hot coup. I gave up.

By the way, the soup was okay...sweet potato and red lentil. There was nothing to surprise the taste-buds, no cayenne or chipotle pepper, no fresh herbs that stood out, and each spoonful was monotonous and starchy. To be fair, maybe I should have tried the cool soups as it was summer, but the hot ones were on the menu, and they should be treated with the same culinary respect.

So I went back to Soupesoup with a grudge, I'll admit. The second time, it exceeded my expectations. I sat at the bar (that way if my soup sat for awhile because the server was too busy, I could rescue it from its cold fate) and was treated like royalty. It was a slow afternoon, but water miraculously appeared in front of me, seemingly of its own accord. My soup was in front of me in less than 2 minutes, with grilled bread nicely placed on the side.


THE SOUPS: La Bruxelloise: I was skeptical. Brussel sprouts, parsnip and potato. Wow, a great soup-maker put their thinking cap on for this one. They managed to make a believer out of me. The broth, all home-made here, had a sweet vinegar flavour (the server suggested it could be their often-used white balsamic vinegar) and was swimming with fresh parsley and whole coriander. The sprouts themselves weren't even bitter like they can be when boiled. The potato and parsnip added a good chewy texture and made the soup filling and substantial.My only complaint was the vegetables were too soft after sitting in the cauldrons for a long time. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the soups change daily, so the odds of finding this soup again are slim. The soups are dependent on what's fresh, mostly organic and available at the market on a given day, so as long as brussel sprouts remain abundant, there may be a few more days of variations on a brussel sprouts theme.


Curly Vegetable Soup was a bit disappointing. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but it was basically the same soup as the Bruxelloise, minus the sweet and sour fun of the broth, plus cabbage and tomatoes.

Grilled fennel and carrot soup took overly-salted carrots, grilled them with fennel and stuck them in a broth that I couldn't taste because of the excess salt. Fennel is about the most delicious thing you can grill or roast but this soup needed some lemon. Maybe it was hiding under the salt. Small mistake. When a restaurant doesn't have a fixed recipe for its soups it can be hit or miss and this was a bit on the fence. Maybe if the vegetables were chopped smaller? Oh, the great thing was that the vegetables were actually chopped by hand! They were all inconsistent sizes. This is not factory soup. Someone put a lot of effort into making this. That's something to appreciate.

On to Soupe Café...


The unique thing about Soupe Café is that the owner and chef, Jeannine Scott, is a Nutritionist, so the soups and baked goods (banana bread, cranberry loaf and pumpkin bread (A slice for only $1.45! Alas, no pouding au chomeur...) are listed with their nutritional breakdowns. You know exactly what you're putting in your body, and it's not the MSG-filled, high-fat instant soups and broth you find in grocery stores, most Pho places, and more restaurants than you really want to know. So I asked about their broths. They're not homemade like Soupesoup's. They come from a powder and they have a lot of sodium and preservatives. Like I said, broth is tough, but a restaurant that specializes in soup should have enough vegetable trimmings to make a ridiculous amount of broth.


THE SOUPS: The Spicy Seafood Chowder at Soupe Café was the best deal around for a filling meal. It was full of tiny shrimp, and loaded with clams, and a large bowl only set me back $4.99 at lunch (A roll is extra?). It was way too salty, and left me dying of thirst, but was delicious at the time.


The Mesquite Chicken Chili was a very nice balance of sweet and spicy, like a fruit-and-tomato salsa...Does it have pineapple? A combination of sweet red peppers, corn and mild chili flavour make this my Soupe Café top pick. It'll even stick around for awhile in the soup rotation.

The Chicken Gumbo suffered by comparison. Plain rice, tomatoes and chicken with a little red pepper...Basically it is the Mesquite Chili with half the spices, but if I'd tasted it first maybe I would have liked it, the same way I might have liked the Curly Vegetable soup more if I'd tried it before the Bruxelloise at Soupesoup. I think it's a little too simple. People from Louisiana will shake their heads sadly at the Canadian version of gumbo. BUT! It did follow tradition and use fresh okra. I just wish it had been chopped, instead of left whole. The gumbo might have thickened better. Trouble is it gets slimy when you cut it, so it's a hassle, but also very necessary.


The Black-Eyed Pea Chowder with Turkey was pretty good. The beans were perfectly cooked and actually had a taste. The soup was very dense and filling. You definitely get you money's worth and you won't leave hungry. My only real complaint is that the processed turkey bacon came in oddly-sized, unappealing pieces, but it added a lot of salty flavour to the broth.

The Winter Vegetable soup was bland, because it was actually low in sodium and didn't have much to fall back on. The vegetables aren't organic, so don't pop with flavour, especially the canned tomatoes.

The restaurant's heart is in the right place. None of the soups here are gourmet. They're not served with a drizzle of crème fraiche, topped with melting Gruyère, or fresh herbs, as it's hard to garnish a self-serve soup cauldron, but there's nothing pretentious about the soups. They're honest, simple, and home-made enough to make me want to pick up 3 litres for my freezer. The prices are very respectable ($6.99 for a litre of soup, $9.59 for stews, chili and chowders), and as soon as the restaurant starts making their sandwiches on better bread, those will be a bit more respectable too.

WINNER: For quality of ingredients and soup innovation Soupesoup wins hands-down. I love the variety of fresh, mostly organic, vegetables and the best combinations of home-made broths with creative and most-often delicious fresh herbs and whole spices. It may seem like a lot to charge $4.99 for a small bowl of soup, but that's just a dollar more than the inaccurately-titled "large" portion (because it's the same actual size) of non-organic soup at Soupe Café. At a decent bistro that's what the soup starter will cost you anyway. At Soupe Café you can get a smaller, an even smaller, and a taster-sized bowl of soup for even less, so for a lot of soup you really get a good deal at Soupesoup, and they'll give you a taste for free. Keep in mind that soup is their bread and butter, and when you pay $2.95 for a standard bowl of soup at a restaurant, it's either because it's not home-made, it's not good for you, or everything else on the menu is more expensive so the restaurant doesn't need to make their money on soup and can afford to price it lower.

RUNNER-UP: For a very, very affordable, simple, and heart-warming meal, Soupe Café is definitely my choice. I know I won't have to worry about service and the soups are exactly what you expect. Maybe that's not so adventurous, but both resturants have their time and place. Where I'll go to Soupesoup with my fingers crossed, hoping for a good-to-great soup experience (and definitely the sight of warm pouding au chomeur), I'll go to Soupe Café more regularly to fill my poor, cold bones, and my freezer, with some warm comfort.

Expect to pay: $7.00-$10.00 at Soupesoup inc. tax and tip, $4.00-$8.00 at Soupe Café.
Hours: Most Soupesoups are open Monday to Saturday from 11-4, but check the website. Casgrain location is open everyday. Soupe Café is open 9:30am-8:30pm weekdays and 10:30am-5:30pm weekends.

Soupesoup
2800 rue Masson; 7020 rue Casgrain; 2183 rue Crescent; 174 rue Saint-Viateur Ouest; 8 rue Duluth Est; 649 rue Wellington
http://www.soupesoup.com/

Soupe Café
2725, rue Notre Dame Ouest
514.932.3053
http://www.soupecafe.com/menuoftheday.html