If you are in the Boston area this holiday season and hungry for some warm comfort food served up by a most spirited staff, plan to visit New England Soup Factory, winner of four Best of Boston awards in a row for its soups, salads, desserts, and other “Feed Your body Well” specialty foods.
Graduates of the Johnson & Wales cooking school who shared a passion for food as well as for each other, husband and wife team Marjorie Druker and Paul Brophy opened the original Soup Factory restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1995. The Soup Factory now serves its hearty made-from-scratch wholesome soups, sandwiches, salads, and prepared items at Brookline Place and at it’s inviting location on Needham Street, in Newton (just a careful, but quick walk across the busy street to shopping at Filene’s Basement, Linen’s n Things, Marshall’s, and more). The restaurant has earned rave reviews in Restaurant and Institutions magazine, Nation’s Restaurant News, Restaurant and Business Magazine, and Newsweek.
According to Marjorie, who hosts a cooking blog and shares recipes on the Soup Factory web site, the Soup Factory mission was to “take old, good ideas and fashion them to these times. The key is to create comfort food that is good for you.” The soup menu changes daily and combines an inspiring blend of cultural flavors and recipes, including more than one hundred ‘custom-designed’ Soup Factory soups – Hungarian Bing Cherry soup anyone? You’ll find it here.
The Soup Factory commits to using only the best seasonal ingredients from local markets to cook up restaurant favorites like spicy chickpea, butternut squash, lobster bisque, mushroom barley, split pea with fresh spinach, and – my absolute favorite – chicken pot pie soup, topped with a delicate pastry that I keep insisting should be offered with every soup!
Regular visitors know to call ahead to hear the day’s specials or to check the web site menu, here. Some favorites occasionally run out by dinner time, but a visit is still always worth the trip. Generous samples are free and encouraged by cheery, personable staffers, eager to describe the ingredients and to insist that you ‘oh, try one more’ without guilt.
The Soup Factory offers much more than just soup. Grab and Go Specialties include fresh pasta sauces, Cheeze-it macaroni and cheese (yes. topped with actual CheezITs), gourmet green and fruit salads, and specialty vinaigrettes to match the season – up for a taste of Vermont goat cheese, paired with pears, apricots, nuts, fresh beets, or raspberries? Hmmm. Vinaigrettes are available for $5.75/16 oz container.
Seasonables (priced from $3.25 – $3.50) might include Fresh Beet Salad, with organic beets and onions in raspberry vinaigrette; a Chicken Salad Plate, with smoked chicken breast, sweet onion, and celery, in a dill and Dijon mayonnaise; or roasted sweet potato salad not to be missed. In the mood for feta? Try the Mediterranean Salad ($6.50), featuring fresh spinach, red and yellow peppers, artichoke hearts, grape tomatoes, cucumbers, French feta cheese, and crispy croutons with a lite lemon mustard vinaigrette.
For those who enjoy a little sandwich with their soup, Soup Factory offerings ($3.99/ half, $7.25/whole) are delicious and creatively named. Try the Hamlet for thinly sliced Black Forrest Ham on rustic bread with baby greens, cheddar cheese, and homemade honey apricot mustard. Grilled Chicken and Avocado comes on Armenian lavash bread spread with Boursoin Cheese. Be sure to ask for your half sour Kosher pickle.
Can’t satisfy that sweet tooth? Be sure to save room for a Soup Factory dessert, including four chocolate or butterscotch brownies, brown sugar chocolate chip cookies, lime and orange coolers, molasses chews, or the peanut butter & jelly cookie.
If you prefer to simmer your own soups at home, be sure to check out Chef Marjorie’s new cookbook, just in time for the holidays: The New England Soup Factory Cookbook: More Than 100 Recipes from the Nation’s Best Purveyor of Fine Soup.
