One of the few traces left of my Chineseness (don't gasp, my mom would be the first to call me a Twinkie) is the ever-present craving for soup. Chowder or pho, bouillabaisse or caldo verde, laksa, ramen, borscht, hot-n-sour, even FN Cup-of-Soup--if it's hot, simmered and salty, BRING it, and if it's winter, just KEEP bringing it.
So I got a little bug-eyed when I read about Winter Soup Specials at Hearth. $5 for a bowl of soup? $10 for a soup and sherry pairing??? YES, please! Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady and I peeled layers at Hearth's low-lit, limited bar area, keenly anticipating slurpage.
Why at the bar? Such is the zoning for the Soup Special, but we settled into the window seat and weighed our options.
Turns out, we didn't really need to. We could have ordered all 5 soups and still kept eating.
I'll preface this by saying that the soup was lovely and craftily made. We liked the sherry pairings, which were patiently explained to us by our server. SSFL and I moderately-to-enthusiastically enjoyed the 4 that we tried:
Ribollita with Black Cabbage, White Beans and Parmesan (paired with Oloroso, Asuncion, Alvear, Montilla-Moriles): The fave of the four, flavorful and rustic, reeking pleasantly of thyme and tomatoes, decked with crisped bread bits. (Pictured just above.)
Roasted Fennel with Citrus Gremolata (paired with Manzanilla, Gaspar Florido, Jerez): Meh. Just...meh.
Smoked Red Lentil Soup with Pistachios and Yogurt
(paired with Amontillado, Jose Luis Gonzalez Obregón, Emilio Lustau,
Jerez): Rich and well-balanced, this smooth puree was our second-runner
up.
Chicken Soup with Farro, Escarole and Chicken Dumplings (paired with Pale Cream, Festival, Alvear, Montilla-Moriles): Jeez, I REALLY WANTED to like this one (who doesn't like chicken soup???). It was appealingly amber and limpid, the dumplings were nice and light, but it was missing an unami ooomph. (Pictured at the top of the post.)
It's going to be hard to understand just by looking at the pictures, so take my word for it. These bowls photograph big, but were breathtakingly twee in person. These were the Tom Cruise of soup bowls. Checkout the NY Mag pic--does that not scream "soupy horn of plenty"?
In reality, if you were to drop two hard-boiled eggs into each bowl of soup, the liquid would have barely covered them.
On top of that, what soup there was seemed tepid. While my yearning for napalm-hot soup may not be for everyone, a bowl this small shouldn't get cold before you finish it.
We went with four soups, a cheese plate (with 3 selections), and a panna cotta with grapefruit and pink peppercorns (YUM) before stopping ourselves, as it was slowly veering toward the budget-minded-night-that-wasn't.
Methinky some of my disgruntlement has to do with poor marketing--had they billed the same amount of soup as a "flight of 2 for $10" or a "tasting of 3 for $15", I think I would have been more mentally prepared for the portions.
On the other hand, it's soup. SOUP! The markup must be the stuff of dreams! Dish up a bowl three times this size for $10, and it would still be a good deal for guests (yay) with a hefty profit for the kitchen (double yay).
How about some fun, bar-oriented fillers that can be ordered to accompany the Soup Special? Chef-curated cheese plates, or rustic grilled cheese, n'est pas? Half-orders of the pastas or the meatballs on the menu, maybe?
Or at the very least, post-soup, OFFER THE MENU PROPER, as unabated appetites will be predictable enough. (I could have been more aggressive, but the servers seemed bent on keeping the real eating in the main dining room.)
To be fair to Hearth, $5 for a bowl of these soups isn't a raw deal. But be warned--don't park at that bar meal-minded and ravenous.
_____________________________
Hearth
403 E 12th St
@ 1st Ave
East Village
NYC, NY 10009
Phone: (646) 602-1300
Fax: (646) 602-0552
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