I Think the Outpost May Be Gone
The Outpost has been mentioned a number of times on this blog, most notably in Lunch’er Grace’s Ultimate List of Midtown Soups at the beginning of the year. Described as “the soup deal of a lifetime… hidden in the MTV/Viacom Building” this place sounded like a proper Midtown Lunch kind of place. With the weather starting to get cold, I decided to check out the Outpost last week; but when I entered the building on the NW corner of 44th and Broadway, and rode the escalator up, I found a place called the “V Stop”. They had soups, and as promised by Grace a 12 oz cup cost $1.25, but the place itself looked like just another generic Midtown crap hole… and the soups looked like they were made by some central catering company- not a random old chef with a whimsical love of soup. I was kind of thrown off by the whole thing and didn’t even bother trying the admittedly cheap $1.25 soup.
Is this what the original Outpost was like? Has anybody been recently? Are the soups still good? My gut tells me this place is now a pass…
Posted by Zach Brooks at 10:08 am, October 16th, 2008 under Outpost, Soups.
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9 Comments
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Went there twice this week. The soup was a little watery but was at least interesting (jalepeno white bean chili on monday and corn and green chile soup on wednesday). It’s not worth going that far just for soup to be my only lunch item, but when I bring lunch, like today’s whitefish salad sandwich, it is the cheapest way to supplement.
Also people, it is obviously subsidized by Viacom, which means that MTV is finally paying us back for 68 seasons of real world/road rules challenge. That channel went downhill so quickly, I feel like they owe me something.
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Yeah…I still call it the Outpost, but by the time I started going there a few months ago, it was already an RA joint. As far as the soups, my take is that they’re nothing special, though they’re not bad – basically like getting a Hale & Hearty soup for 1/4 to 1/3 the price. Still a great deal, but basically a corporate cafeteria. Whatever-I still go a few times a week since it’s so cheap!
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Does the V in V-Stop stand for Viacom? If it does, that’s lame.
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Haha that’s like people sneaking into my work cafeteria. But it’s run by… Sodexho? and the food is actually sometimes pretty good, plus subsidized; soup is $1.25 for the small size (12 ounce? I think?) and $1.75 for the large (16 ounce)?. Actually my cafeteria is a sweet deal for fat guys like you Zach, meat and 2 sides is $4.28 or something ridiculous, and they load you up. If I were actually someone with any weight to pull at work, I’d try to sneak you in, but people sneak in here all the time :)
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Surprised to hear there was any interest in this place. The soups are essentially the quality you get at Europa or similar places. They were that way before RA took over and still are. The only value I ever ascribed to this place was as a quick fix for somebody who worked in the building – otherwise there are many other places to go. Nice staff, though!
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it was marriott before it was r.a. the soup has always been absolute shit (been here about three years now) — progresso is better soup.
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HAHA! YVO!
A job I had in Nor Cal served Sodexo (AKA the Marriot company’s prison food). I completely know what your food tastes like. Its sad. -
The soup was never fabulous, but it was a good way, as Dave mentionned, to supplement a sandwich with something hot. It seems RA is starting a little monopoly in Times Square. The Conde Nast cafeteria is also run by RA.
I don’t know that the soups were ever amazing, but in fact a few months ago most (if not all) of the food services operations at Viacom were handed over to Restaurant Associates – a big corporate catering company if ever there was one. Prices went up too, although not by much.
Therefore, whatever unique charms the place ever had are now probably gone.