Number_9

So somebody mentioned soup on an October day when the weather is just beginning a nosedive towards winter.

To the Soup Cave! (Kitchen).

Based on Spear Street, the Soup Kitchen appears to be a pub which also has a hot food counter, an unusual set up which was new to me, but worked just fine as you can get food to go, without any wait, or sit down and have it with a steaming cold draught beer.

The menu is short and simple, I get the impression it changes regularly due to its scrawled chalkboard appearance. Soups on offer today included beetroot and horseradish, roasted tomato, pea and ham and cream of cauliflower, along with an equally limited selection of sandwiches. The lack of choice is no bad thing though as it’s clear all food is fresh, homemade and put together with care. I appreciate the approach of “do a small menu and do it well”.

I went for the pea and ham soup which was generously ladled out of a hotwell into a polystyrene cup (about 3/4 of a pint), my fellow hungry traveller went for the same soup and a ham salad sandwich.

The soup and sandwich combo will set you back £5.50, while everything is great quality, prepared to order and made the way you would make it at home, I still think this should have been under a fiver. The soup by itself was £3.60, this had better be the best soup I’ve ever tasted. It wasn’t.

It was very good soup but £3.60 to take it away in a disposable cup? That’s pretty steep.

All in all the food is great, lovingly prepared to order with fresh, quality ingredients, if they knocked a quid off everything on the menu, I’d be in there regularly, but with the prices the way they are, this may be a once in a blue moon kind of thing, if ever again. Shame really because it’s perfect cold weather, comfort food.