THE ART OF SOUP
Local restaurants thrill us with winter surprises
BY JENNIFER BURNS LEVIN
A
fter so many weeks of cold and rain, hot
soup has become staple in our house. So
much so that it was verging on boring.
So I turned to the best local resource in
town: Facebook. Followers of my food blog
recommended a handful of usual soups, each
worth trying. The African-inspired peanut soup at
Barry’s is a mainstay for some. Others
recommended the zzambong spicy seafood noodle
soup at Café Arirang, or the thick and dark
mushroom brie bisque at Aquila and Priscilla’s.
Drawing from global traditions, local
restaurants ladle up everything one might want in
a deep bowl. My journey began at Osteria Sfizio,
with a bowl of octopus (now calamari) stew in a
red wine and tomato base. The soup is enriched
with little pearls of fregola sarda, a Sardinian
pasta ($10).
From Italy, I sauntered over to Japan by way of
the Whiteaker’s Izakaya Meiji, where I found an
authentic sukiyaki, a traditional cast-iron hot pot
brimming with beef, napa cabbage, bold
chrysanthemum leaves, broiled tofu and konnyaku
noodles in a sweet and salty broth ($14).
The taqueria at Plaza Latina recently removed
some unusual classics, birria and posole, from
their weekend menu, but I was happy to see
menudo ($5.99), the Mexican tripe soup famous
for its curative powers, still available on Saturdays.
And then the Mediterranean called at Greek
Paradise Restaurant, where they will swirl
together their Persian soup (a mixed-bean and barley soup with mint and spinach) and
Armenian soup (chicken and barley soup with a hint of spiciness) in a giant bowl for
the low price of $3.95.
But one restaurant, above all these delicious offerings, beckoned like a mythical
soup oasis. “Unbelievable,” whispered one insider. “I’ve never had anything like it,”
a customer said. Another just sighed, “Banana!”
Yes, I had shown up at Rabbit Bistro & Bar, the land of molecular gastronomer and
erstwhile executive chef Gabriel Gil. For $6 a bowl, one can voyage into French-
influenced, cream-style puréed soups, changing every few days, all year round. Last
week, the menu featured two legume soups: a red wine lentil crowned with shredded
duck leg confit, and a silky white bean with enough fennel to lighten up the usual heft,
studded with cubes of roasted pork belly and swirled with bacon oil.
Perhaps we should not be surprised by Gil’s stockpot skills. In the past year, he’s
distinguished himself, first winning the Iron Chef Oregon title in Portland, then
serving up Oregon specialties at the James Beard Foundation in New York. His
creative and sometimes wild flavor combinations have created a buzz, sometimes
waspish, often baffled, on the Eugene food scene.
But his soups are brilliant, and I don’t say this lightly. Rabbit co-owner/bartender
Scott Butler agrees. “He rarely repeats them,” Butler says. “The last few winter soups,
for example, have had apple or banana as a sweetening agent. I tell customers that the
soups won’t necessarily taste like the list of ingredients.”
Butler is absolutely right. Gil’s soups are more than the sum of their parts. His
inspiration lies in the molecular gastronomy that governs his cooking, a philosophy
Chef Gabriel Gil
TRASK BEDORTHA
that encourages breaking down dishes into component parts so one can reconstruct
them in new ways. Indeed, Gil prefers the margins of the seasons, because they
encourage experimentation.
“I start getting antsy toward the end of the season,” he says, “and that allows me to
make new discoveries.” This is reflected in his recent favorite, a beer-based parsnip
soup with banana.
Gil’s playful side and, I would argue, the best of his cooking, are evident in the
creative combinations. He’s also not above poking fun at his colleagues. Both Butler
and Gil remember a particularly memorable celery purée soup — possibly the only
memorable celery purée soup in the history of mankind.
It was inspired by Butler’s lunch of Buffalo-style chicken wings.
“Scott often eats chicken wings for lunch,” Gil says, laughing, “so one day I made him
a soup with some extra celery and the bottle of Frank’s Hot Sauce he had in the kitchen.”
Celery soup in a dark, rich, chicken stock, that is, with a blue cheese froth and a rooster-red
hot sauce and butter gel.
“It was like taking a bite and chewing on a chicken wing,” says Butler. “He’s a soup
genius.”
I had reached soup nirvana. Even better, especially for those of us without access
to gels and foams, Gil has offered his philosophy for readers to inspire their own
soups, so we can continue our journeys at home. ■
The Rabbit Bistro & Bar, 2864 Willamette; 541-343-8226; open 11:30am-10pm Mon.-Fri. (closed 2-4:30pm),
5-10pm Sat., 5-9pm Sun.
Jennifer Burns Levin blogs about gastronomic adventures in the Willamette Valley at culinariaeugenius.wordpress.com
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