Monday, April 26, 2010

Soup #2 Galaxy Cafe.... Subservient Chicken


We're getting warmer. There's a wonderful little cafe located off West Lynn that serves up delicious fare. But their tortilla soup is still a bit lacking.
It reminds me a bit of Burger King's "Subservient Chicken" that would magically do anything you told it to. You would try to stump the chicken by putting in random things like "jumping jacks" and yet, that's what the chicken would do. And you liked the site but it wasn't amazing.
This soup is kinda like that.
This soup does everything you want it to do. But's it's not amazing.
The soup is spicy and I think this is due to the fact that a bunch of Rotel tomatoes and diced chilies are used. The soup consists of mostly broth, the aforementioned Rotel mixture, shredded chicken and then the requisite tortilla strips and cheese.
This is a short post because there's just not that much to write about it.
The Galaxy Cafe is a wonderful place with mostly wonderful delicious things to eat but the tortilla soup is a solid C+.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Soup # 1 Chapala: He Chose.... Poorly


Remember in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the Nazi chooses the most beautiful chalice from which to drink and after he rapidly ages 1000 years and turns to dust the knight in charge of guarding the grail looks at Indy and dead pans, "He chose... Poorly." That's pretty much one of the best lines of all time.
Well, I chose poorly with the tortilla soup at Chapala (101 San Jacinto.)
Every time I brought the spoon towards my face I kept thinking about my best friend (who happens to have four legs) Paco. The soup wasn't inedible, but I quickly realized the reason I kept thinking of Paco was because the soup had an underlying smell of wet dog.
I'm pretty sure the culprit of the smell were the tortilla chips which were water logged and had to have been floating in the broth for a while.
Besides the odor of wet dog the soup was as basic as tortilla soup can get. There was chicken broth, a few pieces of large chunks of shredded chicken and the aforementioned tortilla strips. There was a sliver of warm avocado in the soup as well. It was very obvious that the soup had been sitting under a heater for quite some time.
I'll give this soup a rating of D-. I'm pretty sure it could be an F but just having started this journey I'd like to be optimistic and think there could be worse.