The Soup Spoon (HarbourFront Centre)

It's not as good as I remembered, but decent soup during cold, rainy days.

Do prefer the goulash / chicken and mushroom soup than this.

Last week of Round 1 of Bhutan Unfiltered Souperchef Specials and they were sold out of the Spicy Chicken Stew! No!!!! I ended up ordering my default Tokyo Chicken Stew as a safe choice, and enjoyed it as usual. Nothing much to comment about the Tokyo Chicken Stew as it’s always pretty consistent.

The bread roll this time was more of an olive and herb bread roll, which carries a sharper smell of herbs than usual. I found the top of the roll extremely fluffy and soft, but the bottom tended to be dense and seemed to be where all the dough collected. Not my favourite choice of bread as I much enjoyed the previous roll with nutty pumpkin seeds, but still a yummy roll which serves its primary purpose of soaking up all that soupy deliciousness!

One of the choices of salads, sandwiches, flatbreads or cakes as part of the Soupervalue meal is the soba salad with teriyaki chicken weighing in at slightly less than 200 calories.

The side takes some time to prep so the buzzer might ring while you’re enjoying your soup and bread roll. Anyway although it’s prepared to order, the soba noodles tend to be soggy and clump together. I personally wasn’t so put off by that, and I found the mix of sesame seeds, alfalfa sprouts, egg, cherry tomatoes and teriyaki chicken quite delightful. The veggies were fresh and crunchy, while the chicken was tender and nicely seasoned. I wish there was more meat though, as it seemed to be more fat and skin. Wouldn’t mind ordering this again for a change from my regular flatbreads!

I’m not sure why people are so taken with Bhutanese foods all of a sudden, but I’m not complaining whenever I get a chance to be taken back to Bhutan - physically or gastronomically. This season’s Souperholic specials feature six Bhutan-inspired soups. The two soups we tried today are from Part 1 of this series - a Bhutanese Spicy chicken Stew (front) and the Chilli Cheese Stew (back, which the cashier actually cautioned against due to the spiciness!).

If you’ve been to Bhutan, you’ll be familiar with chilli cheese, which is akin to their national dish. This stew is nowhere near as thick as authentic ema datshi, but it’s still yummy and pretty spicy for a stew! It features a lot of dried chillies, as well as three different cheeses. It doesn’t quite hit the same spot as ema datshi does, but it’s still a delightful tribute to the National dish of Bhutan. This soup is totally vegetarian, it’s also dairy-free if you request for no ezay condiment (which is an additional chilli ‘salad’ mixed with coriander).

The spicy chicken stew didn’t strike me as much of a Bhutanese dish, as I didn’t have any of this in Bhutan. I never had a good impression of meat dishes in Bhutan as I found that they tended to chop the meats into awkward chunks with really sharp bones, plus the meat tended to be quite hard. Thankfully, The Soup Spoon’s Spicy Chicken Stew has masterfully cut and tenderised the boneless chicken chunks, and cooked it in a hearty chicken broth with lots of vegetables, AND Bhutanese red rice! What a treat! I love the texture of Bhutanese red rice, plus the infusion of nuttiness it provides to the dish! I loved this soup so much I used the bread roll to sop up every last drop!

It’s also worth noting that the bread roll seems to be bigger than before, plus it’s got more sesame seeds and even some pumpkin seeds embedded inside! I love this change in rolls! Definitely going to be eating more of these Bhutanese soups before they switch to the second half of the series on the first week of October.

Ordered this as part of Set B where you get a choice of a flatbread, sandwich, salad or cake. I originally wanted the sriracha chicken flatbread, but it wasn’t available at dinner time when I visited.

The flatbreads, sandwiches and salads are all prepared when ordered, so they do take a while to be served, but they’re warm! The flatbread is slightly crispy, and stuffed with generous amounts of well seasoned bulgogi beef, gochujang mayo, arugula leaves and quinoa. The savoury and tender bulgogi beef, coupled with the slightly spicy gochujang mayo, nutty quinoa and bitter arugula makes this combination a winner. The portion size is also perfect, it’s smaller than a wrap you’d get in the supermarket, but filling as a set with your soup. Plus, the estimated calorie count is only in the low 200s! Yums!

Another soup from the CNY menu.

Pretty different from any of the regular offerings at Soup Spoon. I don’t think they have any fish soups on the regular menu (clam chowder excluded). I did like the taste of it, slightly sour from the preserved veg, but in a mild and comforting way. I like how tender the fish is, and that it didn’t disintegrate into the stew into minuscule pieces. There is, however, a chance of tiny bones in the soup. Also, there was a distinct lack of silken tofu in my stew. I only had one tiny piece of tofu in my stew which was rather disappointing as I enjoy soondubu and silken tofu in soups. Probably much harder to keep soft tofu in larger pieces in soups that stew for hours though 🤷‍♀️