Soup + Salad, Spitalfields

****THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED DOWN BUT THE REVIEW IS STILL AMUSING IF YOU LIKE THAT KIND OF THING****

Soup + Salad
28 - 36 Brushfield St
Spitalfields E1 6AG (Map)
020 7377 5756
www.soupandsalad.co.uk

by Malcolm Eggs

What is soup? Is it a liquid food, or just a food that is neither solid nor gas (I refer you to a dense bowl of winter vegetable)? Is it a pioneering, post-sandwich lunchstuff, or a primitive mirror in which we see the dieting fads of a time (see the non stop forage-pots of the dark ages, bubbling with stoat meat and old turnips)? Most importantly, is it strictly to be placed in the starter-option/lunch-food Venn diagram, or does it have a place at the breakfast table? I ask because Soup and Salad have built one of those A-board street signs, to tell me about their breakfast menu, and I don’t want to think about breakfast falling into the ‘salad’ category.

I have been here before and I think their soups are insanely, cacklingly good – so I enter. The branding implies a world that is trying to dye itself green, but can’t afford enough dye. The A-board is failing: I am the only customer. In a stainless steel pot, framed by the lunch-soups, is the breakfast. But is it soup? Well yes – it’s porridge, soup of the morning. Organic, milky oats form a base (£1.50 - £2.50) and there are optional toppings like sultanas, golden syrup and strawberry jam (10p each). I get one with banana and a helping of brown sugar that is so generous it is bordering on psychotic. The result is hot, gooey and morally hearty. The onset of proper winter has been beating at my hands with a thin, serrated stick all week and this is a rousing defence. Soup and salad, I saloup you.