Hot Soup Cart

Once the weather starts getting colder, the hot soup carts start appearing all over midtown. They all look fairly similar with their big red hot soup banners, but I don't know if they are run by the same people. Somehow in the past 6 winters I've never tried them, but today, since I was short on time, I decided to start a new block by block challenge and the soup cart was up next. (I skipped the street meat cart because I couldn't tell if they used broccoli.)


The soup cart had about 15 different soups available for purchase. You can get soup in small (12 oz), medium (16 oz) or large (32 oz) sizes. I'm not very good at visualizing the different sizes and how filling they are (even when looking at the cups), so I couldn't decide whether to get the 16 or the 32 oz size. I didn't want to be hungry an hour later from not eating enough for lunch but the 32 oz size just seemed so expensive ($9.50), so I went with the 16 oz size. I found out later that the medium 16 oz size is equal to the large size as Hale and Hearty, so it's good that I picked up the 16 oz.


I got the wedding soup, since I figured that would be a good standard to judge how good their soup is. I like wedding soup and have tried a bunch of them, as I've mentioned before. The soup came with a roll about the size of my hand. I liked the flower design on the roll.


The wedding soup was pretty good. It actually reminded me a lot of the canned wedding soup that I used to get, mostly because the type of pasta used is similar. As for thickness, it was a medium level, not as watery as Europa soups usually are but not quite as densely packed as Hale and Hearty. Flavor was good, and the soup was full of meatballs, pasta, spinach, and carrots. I liked it and would definitely go back to try another soup. Now that I know I don't need to get the large size, it's actually not a bad price for lunch at $5.50. The new block is off to a good start!