Food For Thought: Taking Care of Business

Today a good friend told me he had never gone to Souplantation and I almost slapped him. But luckily for him I was behind the counter at work and I like him enough to not walk around the counter and go through with my slap.

But honestly, never?!

It's a catastrophe. Souplantation is a dining experience everyone needs to be a part of sometime in their life, if not many times. The trick though about the place is that you gotta be careful; you gotta be careful to not leave feeling like fatass over soup and salad. That, makes you feel worse than anything. I mean, leaving a burger joint that way is ok because you had a baby cow smothered in cheese and pushed between two buns, and most likely fries or onion rings so you leave heavy, yes, naturally. Add a beer to that and you're in for the night-sleeping. Very coma-like. But with soup and salad, it's a bit shameful.

Now I get it, Souplantation when you go (either your first or twenty-third time) is a tantalizing feast of endless possibilities. That's the beauty of it: options! We Americans LOVE our options. I try to go pick out a deodorant and I get stuck for half an hour looking over my options. (My bad, bad problem of indecisiveness over small matters doesn't help). But with food I welcome the idea of picking, and instantaneously making your dinner. That's the other hot idea about Souplantation is that not only do you choose your menu, but you get it right away. No fuss. No waiting. No needless small talk amongst your company when really all any of you are thinking is "where's my damn food.."

Sometimes eating in groups is are hard thing to do. Ironically I preached the awesomeness of groups in last Friday's Food For Thought but like I said, pizza is special and a totally different circumstance. Plus, the group is only agonizing at the beginning, once the food arrives it's really a big party with chairs and tables. You eat and mmmm your way through your meal. If with friends you definitely talk with your mouth full. As your friend, and voluntarily be part of the relationship they must now deal with your lack of manners because friendship, true friendship, is the lack of impressing. Manners are means of impressing, which isn't a bad thing, it just doesn't belong among best friends.

Souplantation is a great setting to put two great things together: big company and ready(delicious)-made food.

The Caesar salad is by far the best of its kind. It's the dressing, they add lemon, and it's light. And I usually forget the fatass rule and get whole plate of it.

The Clam Chowder-AH- exquisite. I highly recommend a bowl of that. With oyster crackers on top of course.

The Strawberry Lemonade is not even funny how good it is. But just one glass, you don't want to hog your stomach with that instead of the food, trust me. If you overload on the sweet fluids you'll never have room for the cobbler. And when they have the apple-cranberry cobbler, um you better pair that with a dollop of vanilla frozen yogurt. Hot and cold, with desserts, were meant to be together.

I would skip the pasta, it's always a disappointment. Always. Do not, I repeat, do not be fooled by it's looks. It's like most men at a downtown club: looks good but really, bland. Made out of cardboard box (the pasta and the men).

Yes Souplantation is a buffet and yes you have to be your own waiter but hey, it's not all that bad, especially when you're young and half the people you know are waiters, and you know that they know that food customer service is hell on earth. So go give your would-be waiter a rest this Friday and say, "hey, let me take care of it tonight."

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