Diary entries have been absent for awhile here, not because I stopped eating soup, but because it's become virtually impossible for me to find a place serving something I haven't already written about. Fables Cafe used to be good for at least one new variety a week, but this summer they seemed to have gone to about five or six tried-and-true choices in rotation. They are mostly okay, but what's the point in writing about tomato basil for the third or fourth time? Likewise, at Athena's, every time I stopped in over the past three months they were serving split pea. I love their split pea soup, but how many times do you need to hear that? So I was looking forward to getting back to Steve's in Helena, since I'd only been there a handful of times, and always on Saturdays. It seemed a good bet that a mid-week visit might afford the opportunity to try something different. Well, I was half right in that assumption. The soup of the day yesterday was Potato Bacon. I've been a little surprised to see how common potato soups have become over the past couple of years (it's one of the staples at Fables now too), mostly in the form of "loaded" baked potato soup. Thankfully, Steve's avoided the temptation to go overboard. It's not that I dislike the loaded soup, but I suspect a big part of what makes it taste so good is the copious amounts of cheese in the mix. Nothing against cheese, but it's supposed to be potato soup, so I'd like to taste the potato (this is a common problem with broccoli soups too, by the way). So Steve's does it right-- no cheese, and really only a bit of bacon to enhance not overwhelm the creamy potato flavor. I was looking for something a bit more exotic, but I really can't complain when something so straightforward is done so well. It's starting to look like I'll have to start experimenting in my own kitchen if I want something truly out of the ordinary.
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