Pennsyltucky Veggie Awards 2011 – Best Soup

The Pennsyltucky Veggie 2011- Best Soups award goes to Espresso Yourself Cafe in Newport. From Potato Rivel to Vegetarian Chili to good old Tomato Soup, they have always had a vegetarian soup on the menu and each is more delicious than the next.

The portions are huge, a “Cup” is what I consider a bowl and you can dive off a high dive and never touch bottom in the “Bowl” sized portion. Rock bottom prices of $3.25 Cup, $4.75 Bowl, $5.50 Pint, $10.00 Quart and are all made fresh in their wonderful kitchen. The flavors of each are so well thought out and you can tell they are fresh with the first spoonful. Our favorite is to pair a cup of their daily vegetarian soup with a half of one of their vegan sandwiches.

All of the vegetarian soups in Pennsyltucky were judged on availability, flavor, texture, choice of ingredients, appropriate temperature, creativity, presentation and value for portion size. Other restaurants had some super soups but Espresso Yourself always had an outstanding vegetarian soup on its menu when we visited.

The Local Heirloom Tomato soup was vegan and so creamy good. It tasted like we had just taken a bite of an Amish grown tomato and warmed us the whole way to our toes on the rainy day we visited. We had just run a local 5k race in the cold rain and a hot bowl of any soup that day in April may have tasted like the best in the world but it wasn’t a fluke at all. We had enjoyed the Potato Rivel soup a few times over the past year; a creamy soup with hunks of soft potato, seasoned lighty with pepper and had rivels in it! If you aren’t from Pennsyltucky, you might never have had the little misshapen firm dumplings and they usually aren’t in anything vegetarian. That soup is a real treat and although it is not photographed, it is currently the soup to beat.

Each soup has always been garnished appropriately (flat leafed parsley for tomato soup, cilantro and corn chips for chili) and seasoned just right. The Pumpkin Chickpea Curry may have been a new and bold flavor for those who have never left Perry County but it was a relief and pleasure that they didn’t skimp on the spices in this mouth watering stew. Kudos goes to Espresso Yourself Cafe (restaurant review in full here) for being awarded Pennsyltucky Veggie 2011 Best Soup.Do you know of a Pennsyltucky restaurant’s soups that you think can beat the pants off of these in 2012? If it’s in central PA (see map here) and is a regular vegetarian menu item, let me know and I will include it in the judging next year! Drop me, Pennsyltucky Veggie, a line or feel free to leave a comment!