Souper Bowl

On Super Bowl weekend we went to the Souper Bowl.

It's a weekend event in many parts of the country to benefit food charities, and here in Santa Fe it was a competition among twenty four restaurants to earn the votes of tasters for best soup.

It's hard to reconcile food insecurity of some families with the glut of high end restaurants in a city like Santa Fe. But New Mexico is a poor state and people do go hungry and the Food Depot is a well run organization that feeds many who need help. I've been impressed with their outreach and with the scope of what they do all year long.

This event is only one of many successful donor programs they run. The tickets were expensive, but of course it's the donation you're making, not the soup you are buying.

But what soup selections!

The 24 restaurants were set up in the city's convention center main hall with pots of soup at each chef's table and little taster cups. Spoons and trays and napkins and water were provided. Bread stations gave out bread chunks to go with.

There were large round tables to sit at while you sampled each soup and wrote down your scoring notes. The serving stations were organized into four sections -- Cream Soups, Seafood, Savory, and Vegetarian, and the voting was for best of each of those categories.

At a stage in the center, Food Depot organizers made announcements on a microphone, including advising the crowd that Benadryl and epi pens were available for anyone who needed them. They made that announcement three or four times which had an oddly dampening effect on the festive scene, but maybe the lawyers made them do that.

The speakers at the microphone alternated that unsettling message with cautions that some soups were spicy-hot. Fair warning. Maybe the lawyers made them do that too.

None were too hot for us native Santafeans, and all were so good. Although we did have favorites and voted accordingly.

The Souper Bowl is a really successful event and it draws a lot of people. By noontime the convention hall was getting crowded, and by 12:30 the crowds were too much for Jim so we cast our votes and headed home, filled with enough tiny cups of soup to make a satisfying lunch.

My favorite overall, of all four categories: a delicately kicky green chile chicken cream soup with a soft whiff of Thanksgiving sage from Cafe Bon Appetit at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Runner up overall: a winter squash and apple soup with interesting complexity from Agave restaurant.

Jim's favorite: oddly (for him) an Asian coconut and vegetarian soup from Amaya at the Hotel Santa Fe.

But they were all so good, and we had a ball being persnickety foodies and comparing tasting notes. We came home satisfied that our ticket contribution would be well used, full from so much delicious soup, and we even got to bring back the wood taster trays to use at home for snacks.

It was all yummy.
🥣  🥣