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| The fairly non-descript room |
Le problème is that the soup is not bonne. It was okay, at best, even on the blusteriest of blustery, prematurely winter-esque autumn nights, where soup could not even conceive of a more suitable context. In addition, the mood is cozy and pleasant, table packed with smiling patrons who seem content to be exactly where they are. The majority of the, too, seemed to be French gleaned from casual eavesdropping, which I hoped would be as prosperous an omen as the make a case for in Chinese restaurants. This, however, was unfortunately NOT the case.
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| Jungle painting above our table |
I shrugged off the dismissive non-welcome by a passing employee as a result of the unanticipated inclement weather creating an influx of diners. I eventually found my way to an open table, upstairs, and sort of self-seated and waited for my tablemate. A server came by to inquire about beverages, and guided me toward the wine list already on the table. He had this sort of louche and glib manner that he someone made seem amusingly charming, probably due to his (relatively young) age, and was sort of stereotypically "French" in a Ratatouille sort of way. Water glass filled, friend arrived, ordering began.
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| Half-eaten "salad" |
We had chosen the spot on short notice simply due to its name, given the weather, and its proximity to the theatre we would soon be attending. As neither of us had discovered the full array of dinner option that La Bonne Soup does offer, we hadn't allowed enough time for a formal meal, instead planned on a quick homey bowl to warm up and belly-fill before the show. I actually started to lean toward a ratatouille-filled omelet, and then a mushroom crepe sounded really good, but alors!! We were at La Bonne SOUPE. Let them eat soup- and so we did. There was a mulligatawny lentil concoction as the daily special (of which there was surprisingly only one) that our server explained was really more of just a lentil soup, of which I'm not familiar with the precise differentiation he was implying, his tone indicated maybe it wasn't his first choice. Thus, I went with a Crème Andalouse, described as a tomato based cream of vegetables, yet was
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| Creme Andalouse |
somehow devoid of any vegetable flavor and certainly lacked creaminess. What arrived was a rather insipid bowl of sour tomato broth, opaque but watery, which tasted mostly of unripened tomatoes. Despite the premature snowfall, tomatoes were not long off the market, as well as being some of the most preservable types of produce, so the unpalatable concoction had no excuses. It was actually difficult to finish the bowl, done so mostly by soaking slices of the generic baguette from the little basket on the table, whose starchy blandness cut the potage's acidity. I had to eat SOMEthing, as the show ahead of us was a good two hours long, and there wasn't time to re-order. A side dish of green beans was probably the best thing I had that evening, and that's probably just because I'm such a vegephile, 'cause they were pretty greasy, although welcomely garlicky and tender yet still vibrantly
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| Mushroom-Barley |
emerald. Mushroom barley didn't fare much better, it was thin and under seasoned, the paucity of chewy grains and chopped fungus sinking wantonly to the bottom. You had the option to "meal-size" your soup order, which bumped up the price $13 to add a salad, glass of house wine and dessert. That is, if you can count a plate of oversize flaps of romaine with some meager shreds of carrot atop a salad. Even the dressing was d.i.y.: each table bequeathed a bottle of a house peppercorn-ranch type dressing, conspicuously un-French and weirdly Applebee's-esque. The red on hand was a generic blend, neither offensive nor intriguing.
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| Mousse au chocolat |
After we finished our soup, we were offered dessert, which we would've gladly gone without given the quality of everything else, but since it was included, we waited for our mousse au chocolat (the other option given was crēme caramel), deprived the more appealing sounding option of a warm apple tarte tatin , or most of all, Le Colonel, an ambiguously undefined sweet that cost three or four dollars more than anything else. Neither did it have any representation on Yelp!, which makes it all the more intriguing and mysterious. Not intriguing enough, however, to actually go back and have to eat again at L.B.S. to find out.
48 West 55th Street (Between 5th and 6th Avenues)
Tel : (212) 586-7650
