An individual seeking a culinary treat need not look far in developed lands. Fine eateries dot even the smallest cities, and every delectable bite imaginable is imaged and reviewed by hungry patrons desperate to inflate their own online accounts with all-too-long narratives of drawn out meals peppered with occasional comedic relief and mock tragedy of their faux drama dinner dates. Amidst this clambering, the truly delicious morsels require careful attention to be distinguished from their cousins imagined in drummed up accounts of ego-ridden justifiers teetering on the precipice of buyer's remorse. Lost in a sea of lies and questions, the hungry hunter may burst out onto the streets in their quest for a savory sit-down. The patient may square their chances popping in whichever unvisited diner happens along their path, and those with a keen eye may dart it down every side street and alley on their stroll hoping to spot the shivering bodies of those in the know burning whatever time necessary in a queue for a seat at a place plate worthy. Sometimes the wandering stops with the familiarity of a sign seen in an advertisement or a movie (or in the best case, mentioned in the memoirs or biography of someone deceased). When a deserving restaurant is in trouble, even bad friends will campaign for it. Though, as is the curse of the dedicated, those soul-poured investigators cannot find anyone to come and annihilate their hunger with suitable chef recommendations.
Your author in regrettable abandonment of humility must frame theirself as such a dedicated, soul-poured, hungry hunter to inform you of the worst, or rather the very best, meal ever to cross my mouth. There was scarcely an evening of my life off the hunt before this lone cup of potato soup. However, since I turned over its empty bowl in my hands, there has scarcely been an evening on it. Due to the personal significance I attach to this meal and the difficulty in finding it, I could not in good faith or even if I wanted to, tell you where or how to get it. For the serious, dedicated, soul-poured, hungry hunter who still wants to give it a try after reading here those things only which I can put into words, I can help you, but it will not be helping you.
I cannot recall when I first became aware of the dish. Nobody can be found to talk about the things no one wants to talk about. There were rumors of soup in Ireland. Hints here and there. Once in a pub in Bristol, I had heard of the carriage that you take to get there from the seat behind me, but when I turned around, the brown leather jacket of a man with short-cropped hair disappearing with his friends into the crowd could not be followed. Though, some vague periphery notion of some legendary soup does not light up passion. I went many years without its ideal touching on my mind, yet the day that shattered the dam holding back my curiosity is one I still haven't assigned a feeling to. There was a crazed man wandering the Earth that night and talking of soup. Though I thought he was asking for some, I quickly realized he did not want any, and he grabbed me, and he told me things I did not understand, and he told me places I am not now sure if I ever should have found.
Some feelings, even for a moment, cannot be ignored, and even in their fiery pursuit, when part of yourself leaps up to ask why and what you are doing, the rest of you knows you will find no rest until your curiosity is quenched. So, I became a bit crazed myself but with a destination in mind. I wandered the city that was mentioned to me, and I asked many, many people of soup. Many kinds of soup I had in my search, and I ate it every meal of every day, and when a good bowl crossed my path, the part of me that wondered if it could be was turned down by every other part of me knowing that there was more. So one day, I was searching for soup, and the next, very early, I was wandering the streets alone as I heard the clunking of a horse and the steady squeaking of wood of the carriage. When the horses came past me, the man at the reigns dressed in a full brown working suit and a top hat tipped it to me and inquired if I had been the one in pursuit of potato soup. I told him it was soup I was after, and potato, all the better. We road together for a long time and talked of horses, and he told me where he had grown up and about the most incredible soup. The soup was from his home village, and we would get there in time for lunch, but it started raining, so he invited me in the carriage for protection from the rain, and when we continued our conversation, it was in shouts through the fabric of the carriage.
When the rain stopped hitting against the roof of the carriage, I realized we stopped under an awning, and I helped the driver tie up the horses, mostly by standing around holding a length of rope. He lead me through the rain to a small door next to an inn, and we wandered a labyrinth of old hallways until at last we came to an old kitchen next to a table, and at the kitchen was an old woman, carefully stirring her wooden spoon in the base of a large pot. She let me know I had come right in time to try it, and they invited me to sit at the lone candle-lit seat. This was a family recipe, and I felt perfection as I saw her pour the large pot wholly into a bowl for one. This soup was made for me, and I had journeyed long to find it.
They walked over to the kitchen to prepare their own meal, but my eyes were transfixed on this steaming bowl. The smell was actually a bit different. It seemed quite bland, and the colors were a disgusting shade of green. Though, I could not look away, and as the flame danced, it seemed as if the soup did too. I picked up my spoon and inserted it carefully into the soup, breaking through unevenly like left out oatmeal. It felt rubbery and mushy at the same time, and the spoon caked off a bit of potato like meatloaf holding onto dried tomato sauce. Actually it tasted a bit rotten. I put the first bite into my mouth and choked on it. My entire face contorted as I found the slimy part of the lukewarm soup got stuck sliding down my throat. I was about to ask for some salt when I looked up at my new friends, and they were laughing and throwing food at each other while making a sandwich, paying no attention to me.
I stirred the soup and smelled it again. Maybe it just needed good and mixed, so it didn't smell bad anymore. I grimaced as I took another bite, but the grimace was unwarranted, or any reaction. Mixed together, the soup was so tasteless, I realized I could smell the wood of its bowl, and it was cold, and the soup wrapped around the half-cooked potato like water, and the other small vegetables I could feel but not quite taste.
My third bite of soup was when I realized there was something to the improvement. The laughter and play of my hosts faded into the background when to my astonishment, the soup was warm, and I could taste little bits of onion and parsley. Bacon and chicken. Cheese. All salted and peppered. I couldn't believe what soup I had gagged on moments before tasted so, reasonable, and when I took another bite, the flavors burst in my mouth of perfectly cooked potato sliding around mushrooms in a sauce even as the hungry hunter I am, I could not pin down. I closed my eyes to experience the bite, and I was lost in an unrelenting patter of flavors. The soup was just colder than my body, and the potato just warmer, and when I went through this bite, I did not even realize what happened before I was eating another. The food curled around my tongue, and I felt strength in it, and I could feel my body begin to perspire, and though I was already eating, I was salivating more and more. I gargled the soup, and I opened my eyes to see the dancing lights of the candle, and with it, I felt the soup dancing in me. The warmth of the soup turned into a happiness, and I filled myself with it, and with every bite I ate faster, spilling drops of soup on the table, and laughing, and smacking, and with each bite my mouth flew open to suggest another, and I was stomping my feet on the ground, and moving my chair around, as each bite was a new crescendo, and when I flung a spoon of soup onto the ground, I ran over to lap it up before I came back to the bowl, but I had finished it! I licked it clean, and the spoon, and every drop I had spilt on the table and on the floor, and on my clothes, and when I could no longer find the taste of soup on any surface, I turned to the hosts, still making their sandwich and ran after them. I was on the driver, demanding more, and then I remember waking up the next morning with a bruise on my head back in the city.