Soup Diary 112111

There's this diner in Spokane in a kind of seedy neighborhood that I guess you might call a dive-- but I've only ever had really good meals there. Passing through last week, I went in for dinner and had a nice chicken fried steak-- with a cup of soup, of course. It was Chicken Gnocchi, which I would describe as an Italian version of matzo ball soup. But this was much better than any matzo soup I've had in the past (it always seems a bit watery to me, but that may just be the places I've had it, a list that does not include a true Jewish deli). The gnocchi soup seemed richer, though in the end it was really just a nice variation on chicken noodle. I might also mention that the dinner came with an unexpected diversion (I hesitate to call it entertainment) as some guy at the bar was having a loud conversation on his cellphone with the police. I gathered that he had some beef with his father-in-law, and was trying to get him arrested. It really did seem like the kind of conversation that old-fashioned phone booths were designed for, but I can't remember the last time I saw one of those.