New England Soup Factory

LOCATION: 2-4 Brookline Place Brookline, MA 02445
TYPE OF FOOD: Soup (dang! I wanted it to be Willy Wonka..)
REVIEW: Speciality restaurants, like expensive Broadway musicals, have many ups and downs (sorry Spiderman fans! You'll need to wait another three hours to see the rest of the show! No refunds!). Depending on the food, your success can be great or be an epic fail (you're welcome, internet obsessed people!). Desserts? Nope. Sandwiches? Possibly. Comfort food? Hmm....

The menu had several options. At the Soup Factory (so, wait, where are the tall towers billowing smoke? Where's the angry Al Gore protesting it? I knew this was a conspiracy against Webster's Dictionary...), there are regular options available daily, while there are new options made every day. Ignoring the new options completely like Sarah Palin in the vice-presidential debates, I focused on the everyday options. Should I go with Chicken Pot Pie, even if I have never eaten a pot pie in my life (the adventurous option)? Or maybe the "Hearty" "Italian" Beef Stew (because everyone in Italy eats beef stew, right? What grains?)? Or maybe, maybe, MAYBE (I'm only saying maybe) the Lobster Newburg (hmm, butter, cream and cognac! Perfect in a soup!)? Eventually after about two to three seconds, I decided on the Chicken Noodle Soup with multi-grain bread and a fruit salad. After about two to three minutes, the soup went from ladle to paper-cardboard bowl and plastic tray to oak slab.

The bread, dipped in the soup, was very, very delicious. The soup by itself was very good, with not too much salt and nice vegetables. The noodles added a nice touch to the soup with a basic taste. After eating and then drinking the broth, I moved onto the fruit. The fruit was mostly pineapples and grapes, but was still very fresh and fine. A strange green fruit star was in the salad, and was very good, though I could not figure out what fruit it was. Still, I got up, walked towards the glass sheets and metal which was the door, and walked into the town of Brookline.

SERVICE: The service consisted of some sixteen to twenty-four year olds. There were several of them at different stations (the cup management station is the most important of all!). For some reason, as if Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1980 had hit them on the heads (because training for a movie totally makes you win Mr. Olympia, right?), they seemed confused and out of sync. The person who I gave my order to seemed like he didn't hear my order of fruit salad, and nearly didn't give it to me. I know why; it's them. They're after all of the service people! Who's next? Flight attendants? Drive-thru people? Cashiers? Gasp!

ATMOSPHERE: The atmosphere was nothing significant. There were several posters saying that they were in some magazine's hall of fame (yay! Some magazine gave five star rating two years in a row! It has a circulation of 1,050! Let's buy two-hundred dollars to show everyone we are number one! Whoo-hoo!), and a van Gogh inspired poster of a woman leaning over and eating a bowl of soup (half of the thing was pitch black!). The floors were somewhat dirty, but not enough to get seriously upset. Still, dirt is dirt, and paper straw wrappers are paper straw wrappers. Don't worry, I didn't call Greenpeace. Yet.

PRICE: I cannot seem to remember the exact price (this is why you do not play football), but I do remember it something around six dollars. Six dollars is quite good for a soup, and considering the high quality, it could be worth twenty dollars. If you had some edible gold to it. Edible gold. Google, Bing, Yahoo, LeapFish, Blekko, Goby, Boogami, Wikia Search, Yummly, Forestle, or Duck Duck Go it. Cool stuff.

RATING: New England Soup Factory is a great place with extraordinary food and great prices. However, the service is not the greatest and the floors are quite dirty. Or more specifically, covered with straw wrappers. Or more specifically, it was the mats near the door. Or more specifically, it was more on the side facing the left of the door. Or more specifically, some of the straw wrappers were ripped. Or more specifically- oh, nevermind. New England Soup Factory gets a three out of five.