Soup Diary 111014

My friend Steve invited me to join him on an airport run to Missoula the other day, creating a rare non-weekend out-of-town dining opportunity. I had a fantastic pork chop sandwich (a transplanted Butte specialty), but the soup was only average. It was black bean, which I usually like, but this version was a bit too spicy hot, so much so that it overwhelmed the creamier features of the soup. In fact I had to do something that I rarely resort to: I dumped in a whole bunch of oyster crackers to dilute the heat. To be fair, this was a sports bar on Monday night, so I'm sure the clientele was inclined to favor the spicier fare, and maybe it wouldn't have bothered me if I was there to watch football too. But we were visiting (Steve's friend Chandra is a Nepali outdoorsman in the US to promote his wilderness leadership institute), and so a burning tongue was a bit of an impediment. Oh well, the company was good (even better than the sandwich).