The Tartan

by Ian Giles

Last Thursday marked Dining Services’ 7th Annual Soup Crawl, an event where chefs from dining locations around campus pit their soups against each other in a head-to-head competition that leaves everyone with warm smiles and full bellies. From 4–6 p.m., students migrated from station to station, enjoying 10 free soup samples crafted by the chefs at Au Bon Pain, Chartwells, The Edge, The Exchange, El Gallo de Oro, Scotty’s Market, and Stack’d Underground. The statisticians here at The Tartan calculate that I consumed around a quart of soup during my soup crawl. 

Popular favorites among patrons included El Gallo de Oro’s Red Lentil Soup, Chartwells Chef Tim’s New England Corn Chowder, and Chartwells Chef Bayron’s Potato Leek. Sophomore art student Dario Quintero said that the herb oil on Chef Tim’s New England Corn Chowder added “a whole new level of freshness” to the soup. 

Other innovative soup concepts included Au Bon Pain’s Cheesy Chicken Tortilla Soup, which was served with a piece of cheesy bread. The grand soup champion, however, was Scotty’s Market Chef Suzan’s Lentil Soup with runners-up Chef Tim Howland’s New England Corn Chowder and The Exchange’s New England Clam Chowder, respectively.

However, not all were happy about this year’s soup crawl. Senior chemical engineering student Sydney Holubow said that “they cheaped out this year [on mugs].” Having broken her previous soup crawl mug in an iced matcha related accident, Holubow had marked this event in her calendar a year in advance to retrieve another soup crawl mug. Much to her chagrin, no soup crawl mugs were handed out this year. Dining Services instead distributed fruit- and vegetable-shaped pens.

If you missed soup crawl and can’t wait until next year, consider hosting your own soup crawl with your friends (and then invite me). Enjoying a warm, hearty broth surrounded by your fellows truly melts these January blues.