Soup Diary 120110

I've been eating a lot of soup over the past few days, and most of it has been rather good. I had a nice hot cup of Chicken Dumpling Soup down in Canton, Ohio; a cup of potato cheddar in Erie, Pennsylvania that was just a bit too cheesy for my taste; and-- I'm not sure if this counts but it was so good it deserves at least a mention-- some Brunswick Stew (three meats: beef, chicken and pork!) up in Lewiston, New York. But the hands-down winner of best soup of the weekend was without a doubt the beef barley I had in East Aurora, also NY, at the east End Pub. The irony of this is that they had three options that day, each of which I'd had in the recent past (the other two were French Onion and Potato), so I was expecting just some more of the same old, same old ordinary soups, the likes of which you find anywhere. But this turned out to be something special, with a perfect broth, copious chunks of pot roast with a smattering of appropriate vegetables (onions and carrots) and just enough barley to make the name credible. Yum, yum. It clearly was a concoction that the cook spent some time perfecting, and I sure appreciated it. Tom and Ben had the Onion, and they gave it high marks as well. So, with my faith restored that there are in fact still some truly great soups out there, I'll continue to hunt them down, wherever that may take me.