When it’s cold, just give me some hot soup
Fat City’s Jonathan Bender certainly has the last word on the controversial “Meatless in the Midwest” essay by A.G. Sulzberger that ran in this week’s New York Times. The most interesting thing, for me anyway, was Sulzberger’s claim that Kansas City’s Aladdin Cafe at 3903 Wyoming served “the best lentil soup I’ve ever had.”
Last night was bitterly cold, and I didn’t have the energy to go out to eat or cook at home. So I stopped by the Aladdin Cafe for takeout. Because of the New York Times plug, I wondered if the dining room would be filled with people eating lentil soup. Not so, but it was early, and the folks in the one occupied booth in the first-floor dining room didn’t have soup at all! I paid for my two Styrofoam cups of soup and a couple of sandwiches and drove home, where I immediately dumped the soup into china bowls. I don’t give a damn how good the soup tasted: I won’t eat from Styrofoam dishware. (It did look much more appealing in a vintage Noritake pattern.)
