Soup Kitchen

31-33 Spear St.
Manchester M1 1DF

Soups: £2.85 - £3.25
Soup and a Sandwich: £6


This post was meant to be about Koffee Pot, but as they were closing when we arrived (2:45pm), we ducked across the road into Soup Kitchen instead.

Soup Kitchen is cool. You only have to see the neon initials in the windows, the arty magazines on the walls and the stripped-down communal tables to know that you have landed slap-dab in the middle of hipsterville. Luckily, the style does not dictate the food. Hearty soups and sandwiches (bread should come measured in slabs not slices) rub shoulders with vegetarian tarts and meaty stews. If you have ever become despondent whilst choking down a limp and lifeless supermarket (or, God forbid, newsagent) sandwich, then you need to turn in whatever direction will take you to the corner of Spear Street and Hilton Street and run there as fast as your under-nourished legs will carry you.

Although I usually review places alone, this time I was with an American friend, a New Yorker nonetheless, from Brooklyn. Soup Kitchen was, therefore, the perfect storm of style, substance, and low low prices, a combination that everyone can appreciate. Between the spicy, tomatoey, comforting mulligatawny, and the creamy-yet-flavourful leek and potato, I was hard-pressed to pick a favourite. My friend's hummous salad sandwich was declared "nothing special" (the hummous had little to set it aside from the supermarket kind) but was saved by the inches-thick slices of multi-grain bread, which made it worth eating. The poppy-seed whole-grain roll that came with my soup was also a delight: a stretchy crust and dense insides soaked plenty of soup up with each dip, resulting in a spotless bowl when it came time for me to deposit it on the tray rack for collection.

Since it opened, Soup Kitchen has provided Manchester's workers with a port in a storm. Reasonably-priced food and large portions in a place that feels like a friendly local even if many of its patrons wear skinny jeans, is not something often found in the heart of Manchester. Soup Kitchen remains the cool yet accessible friend you wish you'd had when you were younger, but this time it's up to you to make the first move.

EatGoody

1 Hillcourt Street,
Manchester M1 7HU

Vegetable Dumpling Soup (med): £3.20 (http://www.eatgoody.co.uk/menu/eatgoody_menu_10.pdf)

EatGoody is the second Korean place to open in central Manchester this year.  The first, Baekdu, on the Shude Hill edge of the Northern Quarter, was originally a cafe at the back of a Korean grocers in Ladybarn.  EatGoody, on the other hand, seems to have sprung from nowhere.  Its neighbours are an eclectic bunch.  Just off Grosvenor St with the Footage and Deaf Institute, it is next door to a bike co-operative and the Sugden Gym.  Diagonal on York Street are the evangelical Kings Church, a madrassa, and an LGBT centre.

EatGoody is Korean.  It doesn't serve sandwiches or pies.  Instead it serves bibambap (rice, veg and egg that continues cooking while you eat it), dubap (rice or noodles with a meat or veg topping), ramen (a noodle soup with meat or veg), kimchi (pickled cabbage - ubiquitous in Korean food), dumplings, rice cakes (not the rice cakes you buy at the supermarket, rather like small, flat discs of noodle), tempura, pancakes and other dishes, as well as their daily specials.

Being cold and poor, I chose the cheapest of their soups and settled downstairs by a radiator, on a pew (there were chairs but the pew was directly in front of the radiator and my hands were freezing).  The walls are lined with bamboo canes and littered with Koreana - small figurines and pictures of people, native flowers and buildings.  A lot of Korean students frequent this cafe, and it has an earthy-hipster vibe: rough wooden benches, cool magazines, dimmed lights, Korean TV and K-pop, and staff who look they belong on a catwalk.  It's a nice place to cool (or heat) your heels for an hour or two, and they also serve a variety of Korean soft drinks and cheap coffees.

The soup arrived in a large polystyrene coffee mug, which didn't bode well.  However, as I felt like I was about to plumb the depths of hypothermia, I didn't dwell too much on its presentation.  The broth was flavoursome, spicy, and the absence of all-consuming thirst later on means that it isn't just MSG-n-water.  In the broth were strips of egg, slices of red chilli, spring onions, sticks of carrot, and three large dumplings.  A word of warning, if you're vegetarian, this is not the soup for you.  The dumplings definitely contain meat, and were the better for it.  As I drank the soup and chewed the egg (a surprisingly good addition), I noticed that the Koreans, too, were also tucking eagerly into their bowls or rice or noodles.  The prices could be a tad cheaper, as I think £3.20 for three dumplings in a medium portion of soup is about 40p too expensive, but I'm willing to let this slide due to its convenient location to the universities and because it's a new and unusual addition to my go-to places.  My mouth tingling and my hands, face and feet able to feel again, I wrapped up and trudged out into the icy darkness, all the better for having had that soup.

Should there ever be a Grosvenor-Hillcourt-York Streets get-together, let's have EatGoody cater it.

Lunches

I had a bit of an experiment going this week. I was working at Salford Uni from Monday to Friday, and with a tenner in my pocket to burn on lunch, decided to see if I could get good quality and tasty lunches for under £2 per day.  Salford's also a bit of a blank slate to me - I worked there for a few weeks about five years ago, but I haven't crossed the Irwell since.


Day 1: Adelphi Cafe.
17 Oldfield Road
Salford M5 4NE
Bacon on Toast: £1.50  (on a barm: £1.70)


Almost total unfamiliarity with the area around Salford Uni meant that some hungry striding ended up at the Adelphi Cafe (also a newsagents) for want of a better choice.  I was the only person there. I'd been drawn in by the possibility of "bacon toast £1.50" on the sandwich board outside, but was slightly put off by the packaged offerings in their counter. Luckily, the bacon sandwich was tasty, and they didn't skimp on the bacon. Thick slices of white bread, plenty of butter and four rashers = perfection.  The Daily Mail was gathering ketchup stains on the table  (I'll only read the Mail when it's a) free, and b) there is nothing else to read, not even a menu or the back of a fag packet) so I got to get myself all lathered up into a faux-frenzy over asylum seekers, Muslims, gays, women, the youth of today etc.


Day 2: Caribbean Flavas
New Bailey St
Salford M3 5FP
Jerk Chicken and Flat Dumpling: £1.80


Venturing further afield (0.8 miles, according to GoogleMaps), I went to a small Caribbean take-away that's slap-bang-next-to Salford Central Station.  It wasn't line-out-the-door busy, but is obviously a favourite amongst local office workers and the local population.  Caribbean Flavas offers a lot of food: jerk and curried chicken, two different kinds of wings, mac and cheese, roti and various fillings, and a lot more besides.  As my lunch choice was listed under the Sides section, I was preparing to have to splash some cash on something more substantial (or 50p on a Wispa).  When a man slapped down something wrapped in plastic that weighed only slightly less than a brick, I was intrigued.  In case I didn't like this hefty wodge, I went to eat outside in the freezing cold down by the canal so that I wouldn't embarrass myself in the shop.  I shouldn't have feared: my lunch was a dense flat-bread about the size of a personal pizza (the "dumpling") slit in half and stuffed with jerk chicken and generous lashings of sauce.  It was so good.  The chicken was recognisable as chicken (no reconstituted spongey stuff here), the sauce was peppery and sweet, and the bread was firm enough to not disintegrate but had enough give and a slight sweetness to make it interesting even in the parts the sauce hadn't reached.  I ended up only being able to eat £1's worth, but I didn't start feeling hungry again for about nine hours.  Bargain.


Day 3: The Farm
Corner of Church St and Birchin Lane,
Manchester
Spicy Tomato, Pepper and Chilli Soup: £2


I wanted to check out the student protest so I trekked up into Manchester.  I've waxed lyrical about The Farm before, so I won't take you through the litany of incredible things about it again.  I wanted one of the roast pork sandwiches, but as I was still a bit full from yesterday's lunch and it was a bit parky outside, I decided on soup.  The soup wasn't as good as I had been expecting.  It was tasty, with a nice tingle from the spices, and the tomatoes and peppers definitely taste-able, and the huge hunk of baguette was fresh and went well with the soup, but there was something missing.  Maybe it was because I deep-down wanted that roast pork sandwich.  Maybe it was that the portion size was a little too small.  I don't know.  I had a nice chat with the owner, though.  He's a nice bloke and will tell you the provenance of anything he sells.  I should have had that sandwich. 


Day 4: Adelphi Cafe (again)
Same as before.


I was curious about the community-run Creation Cafe diagonal to the Church of St. Stephen and St. Peter on Chapel St.  I went in, opened the door to the cafe, and was greeted by what looked like a hundred pensioners playing bingo with the enthusiasm of someone who's stuck in a home.  I couldn't face it.  So I made my excuses ("Oh, this isn't Salford Uni," and the woman at the desk was good enough to say, "No, love, that's a bit further on") and went for a bacon sandwich and a read of the MEN.


Day 5: Shlurp
Brazennose House East
Brazennose St, 
Manchester M2 5BP
Large Lentil and Winter Vegetable Soup: £1.95


Shlurp's an on-and-off fave of mine.  Sometimes all I want is one of their thick and piping hot soups, other times I can't stand the smugness of their signs.  Today, all I wanted was something I could wrap my cold cold hands around, and maybe hold up to my cheeks when no one was looking.  The soup was delicious.  It smelled a bit gross in the bag, a bit like a stale fart, but once the lid was open the smell was the mingling of stock, lentils, root vegetables and heat.  I shlurped it down, and it wasn't too thin or thick, it actually tasted of the veg in it (potato and carrot, I reckon), and although there were no chunks of unidentifiable vegetables, it did its job of warming me up, brightening my day, and putting a hearty spring in my step.


So, at the end of the week, I'd spent £8.75 on five lunches at four different good-quality establishments.  Quite the bargain when you look at the signs a lot of places have offering fancy sandwiches for a fiver or salads with too many bizarre ingredients for three quid.  All of the places I visited are simple, friendly, and offer food that you want to eat at lunch.  Put down that portabello mushroom, tallegio and sundried tomato panini with aioli dressing, and get a heart-warming soup or bacon sarnie down you instead, you big jessie.