Midtown Lunch

Having zero connection to its similarly-spelled cousin at street level, Soup Stop occupies a corner of that not-quite-as-ugly-as-PABT commuter hell, Penn Station. I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t normally give this place the time of day given that it’s co-located with an outpost of the Chipotle/Qdoba/Baja Fresh competitor Moe’s Southwest Grill and a Jamba Juice wannabe, and doubly so when I know Soup SPOT is approximately 30 seconds away. Still, though, good soup is good soup, no matter its kitchen arrangements. Soup Stop is just that – smaller even than Soup Spot. Is it a connection you want to make from Penn or is it best to take the express elsewhere?

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Catty-corner from the Mitzvah Tank (which does NOT have a 105mm kosher cannon and as such I want my money back) upon its normal parking spot at the far edge of the Garment District, Mr. Broadway has sat for as long as I can remember. Pitopia’s taken up the Israeli edge of the world of kashrus, and offering up some viable soupy options, Mr. Broadway not only rounds out the old-school (or in the words of Grandpa Boris, the old country) options of kosher fare with the inevitable kosher sushi. Enough with the meshugener alte kacher kosher sushi, though – as it’s getting colder and people are getting sicker, we need grandma-style soup. Mr. Broadway, put our soup’s name in lights!
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If your food-based retail establishment has windows clouded with steam and ten or fifteen people in line, it’s probably a safe bet that you’re doing soup en masse and tres proper. I’ve waxed romantic about Soup Spot and its souperiority (I swear, this is the only time in the column I’ll use that word) and how great it is during a heat wave. To me, though, the real measure of soup is how well it works in the cold. How well does the Spot stack up against its big-name chain competition and the generic deli onslaught? Dip the ladle below the jump to find out more.
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We all know that feeling. One Oreo truffle here, a slice of ham there, and next thing you know, you look and feel like this guy. Yes, we’ve all had some point over the holidays – if not these, then surely in the past – when we’ve eaten too damn much. If you’re like me and one of the poor schlubs who wasn’t allowed to burn off vacation at the end of the year, you came back into the office between Christmas and New Year’s full of bloaty self-loathing. Fortunately, the miracle of soup is there for us. It’s cold out, and we feel like crap. Sometimes the thought of too much food is just a sandwich too far. When it’s too cold to walk a few blocks and you just don’t care the local generic deli will suffice, so long as you leave a small part of your soul at the door. Leave we did indeed: it’s time that we take a look at the soup offerings from Bistro Marketplace, one of those generic delis. Food-halls the like of which Heorot was to mead, they have a little bit of everything including soups. Let’s take a look, shall we?

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Aw yeah, it’s cold out. It’s almost universally easier to bundle up and stay warm when it’s cold than to stay cool when it’s hot. Layers, balaclavas, $95 heated touchscreen-compatible loss-proof gloves (pick any two aspects) and the single best food this side of phaal curry to warm you up from the inside out: soup. We did some good stuff with pizza science, but with a few of ML’s top soup specialists (and we want your suggestions to add to that list!) it’s time to break soup down and find the best in Midtown.

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