This past Saturday was the second annual Schenectady Soup Stroll. Twenty Five restaurants and bars sold 3 oz samples of soup from noon to five, for one dollar each. My wife and I partook in the soup festivities last year, and it was a lot of fun. It’s a blast walking around downtown sipping and slurping soup and imbibing in a drink or two. We got full and ran out of gas after only six samples, (though I probably could’ve eaten one or two more).

Yelp was a sponsor of the event, and Daniel B., Albany’s local Yelp representative, was tasked to field a judging team of himself and two others, and when he sent out an announcement requesting volunteers, I jumped at the chance to be a judge. This is going to be a hoot, I thought.

Then after I committed to doing it, I had a change of mind. Why would I want to force myself to eat 25 portions of soup? That’s a lot of soup to eat in the span of a few hours. I got sick just thinking about it. But I didn’t back out, and I’m still beside myself that I was able to eat all twenty five soups, chowders, and bisques. The walking helped. We hoofed it from restaurant to restaurant, and it took nearly four and a half hours to complete the task.

Here’s another problem. Food tastes better when you’re hungry. We all know this, and my fear was that as the afternoon wore on, I’d get fatigued and not be able to accurately judge the food. Thankfully that didn’t happen, and as the end of the tasting drew near, I was very full, but I still enjoyed the soup. I enjoyed the good ones anyway.

And there were indeed some good ones and surprisingly, some awful ones. But instead of getting into the individual soups, I’m going to give you a high-level view of my thoughts on the commonalities I noticed. When you eat 25 soups back to back, some trends and themes emerge.

Continue reading “Slurping and Scoring 25 Soups in Schenectady” →