Soup Nazi

Remember Al Yeganeh? Or his little soup place that is known as Soup Kitchen International located in Midtown West that is made famous by its good soup and more importantly, the Seinfeld episode that gave fame to the title "Soup Nazi".

The original store has not opened for a while, and according to Soup Nazi's website (link), Al is on an extended trip and is now franchising rights to his store. Pretty smart. Franchising is the way to go to get rich pretty quickly, and a whole lot easier method to make money than just opening that one store. One of such franchise, now called "The Original Soup Man" just opened around my office, on 3rd Avenue between 43rd and 44th streets. I use to love the soup from the Soup Nazi, and I would often go and buy quarts at one time and have them for lunch for the next week. The line used to be amazingly long, often a wait of 2 hours or so, but then again, that was 5-6 years ago. During that time, the Zagat rating for his soup is even higher than some of the top restaurants in New York. Since I haven't had it for so long, and I used to really like his soup, I gave his franchise a try this past Monday, and again on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday. I already had Seafood Chowder, Turkey Chili, Beef Barley, Veal Goulash and Crab Bisque. The soup was still very good, pretty much like how I remembered it 5 years ago. The soup continues to be filled with tons of ingredients (unlike most soup places, where they put ONE piece of beef in their soup) and is more like a meal rather than just soup, as most of his soup are chowder like, thicker, thus more filling, than other soup. The bread they gave you goes well with the soup since the soup is more like a meal, and easier to dip the bread into, instead of the more broth like soup. However, the price is not cheap, probably reflects the ingredients that they give you, and you are looking about $9 JUST FOR SOUP. They also give you some fruits and chocolates as well.

Even with that said, I do have one small problem with his soups, a similar problem that I started to notice 5 years ago shortly before I stopped going there, which is that most of his soup has a certain common taste. Obviously the Veal Goulash and the Crab Bisque and the Turkey Chili and so on are not the same soup and there are noticeable differences amongst them, but essentially, there is a common theme, a common base that eventually leaves you wondering whether or not you are drinking something different, or just consuming the same thing with a twist. The soups are still good, but the degree of variation amongst the different flavor, I think, are somewhat misleading and masked. I am not sure if this is something an average consumer would notice, if they have his soup every now and then, or once a day everyday. However, I ate for the past three days, twice on Monday, and tonight, ordered two soups for dinner, very similar to how I used to order quarts of his various soups 5 years ago and would often try 2 or 3 of them at one time, and you would start to notice, that all his soups kind of taste the same. What do you think? Go try it out and tell me.