Editor's note: This story was originally published in February 2022.
International travel can be quite the headache these days, so we decided to take you on a trip around the globe, one bowl of soup at a time, without leaving Tucson.
Why soup?
Because it’s winter and wintertime always puts us in the mood for a steaming bowl of soup.
We’ve found Tucson restaurants that take a page from the recipe books of France, Greece, Persia, Mexico, Hong Kong, Poland and America’s heartland, creating soups that define cultures and traditions.
Bonus: No passport or boarding pass required.
Cream of Chicken dumpling soup at Beyond Bread. It’s only available on Sundays.
Middle American classic: Beyond Bread’s Cream of Chicken & Dumpling
When it comes to meal-worthy, warm-your-belly soups, Beyond Bread‘s Cream of Chicken & Dumpling fits the bill. Bite-sized chunks of moist roasted breast meat bobs and weaves alongside chewy gnocchi in a creamy, peppery gravy. This is classic Sunday supper soup, hearty and savory and begging to be eaten slowly to savor to the last spoonful.
The Cream of Chicken & Dumpling has been on Beyond Bread’s menu since it opened its second location on East Speedway in 2001, said District Manager Matt Boling.
“It’s definitely a very popular soup, especially in the wintertime when things get colder,” said Boling, who joined the 24-year-old company when it was in its infancy. “That soup complements the bread bowls that are so popular. It’s definitely a comfort food.”
Boling said one of the chain’s secrets is using gnocchi rather than dumplings, which tend to fall apart in the soup.
The Creamy Chicken & Dumpling is only available on Sundays at all three Beyond Bread locations — 421 W. Ina Road; 3024 N. Campbell Ave.; and on the east side at 6260 E. Speedway.
Hours: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily
Order online: beyondbread.com
Head chef George Romo stirs a pot of French onion soup at Ghini’s French Caffe.
Oooh-la-la: French Onion at Ghini’s
Ghini’s French Caffe chef-owner Coralie Satta has been serving her house special French onion soup since she opened her doors in 1992. She starts with a beef stock infused with garlic and Provencal herbs (thyme, rosemary, savory, marjoram and oregano). She prefers yellow onions — lots of them — because Vidalias tend to be too sweet for her taste. She adds some sherry and a splash of wine, tops the soup with Gruyère and Parmesan cheese and pops it in the oven to get brown and melty before serving with her father’s crusty baguettes from his La Baguette Bakery next door.
The result is a deeply rich, savory, beefy broth with tender-to-the-tooth onions and the rich tang of the melted cheese.
The soup is one of her big sellers, right behind Ghini’s signature Eggs Provençal and tied with the popular Les Croques ham and Gruyere sandwiches.
Location: 1803 E. Prince Road
Hours: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; closed Monday
Order online: ghiniscafe.com
French Onion duex: Le Rendez-vous
You also can get French onion soup at Tucson’s oldest French restaurant Le Rendez-vous, 3844 E. Fort Lowell Road. The restaurant, which Jean-Claude Berger opened in 1980 and his son, Gordon Berger, continues to run today, offers a baked French onion soup with a medley of cheeses.
Hours: 4-9 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday
Order online: rendezvoustucson.com
Zurek, a classic polish rye soup, at Polish Cottage.
Central European hangover cure: Polish Cottage’s Zurek
Sharron Tompkins had never heard Zurek — the traditional Polish sour rye soup — referred to as a hangover cure, but with its aggressive notes of marjoram, many in Poland and elsewhere swear by its healing powers to dull that one-too-many-pints morning-after headache.
At the 10-year-old Polish Cottage Restaurant, Zurek starts with a sour rye base that’s complemented with sour cream to create a creamy broth similar to European white borscht. You also can order it with sausage and hard boiled egg on the side.
“People love it instantly,” said Tompkins who has worked at Polish Cottage nine of its 10 years. “When they are willing to be adventurous, this is the soup I recommend to them. It’s quite creamy and it really warms the belly and gets you going.”
Location: 4520 E. Broadway
Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, until 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Order online: tucne.ws/polishcottage
Pappoules’s Avgolemono soup, a traditional greek soup with chicken, rice and lemon.
Opa!: Pappoule’s lemon chicken and rice
The Greeks like to refer to Avgolemono as chicken soup’s silky rich cousin, and at Pappoule’s at Foothills Mall, the egg lemon soup has been a hit since Michael and Bea Cotsones opened the restaurant in 2007.
“It’s a very traditional chicken rice soup and we add the Avgolemono sauce,” said the Cotsones’s son, Chris, who has run the restaurant for the past five years.
Think of it as your basic chicken and rice soup in a chicken stock that’s given a rich, silky kick with the traditional Greek egg and lemon Avgolemono.
“It’s the most popular dish in Greece and it’s popular here,” Cotsones said. “It’s warm, rich and it makes you feel good when you eat it. You really taste that Greek love.”
Pappoules, which Cotsones’s grandparents, John and Angeline Cotsones, launched at the Tucson Mall in 1982, serves its Avgolemono with pita bread.
Location: 7475 N. La Cholla Blvd.
Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, until 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Order online: pappoules.com
The Osh Reshteh soup is a popular dish at the Persian Room.
Persian perfection: Osh Reshteh at the Persian Room
The first thing you taste when you dig into Persian Room‘s traditional Osh Reshteh is the fresh Middle Eastern herbs — parsley, cilantro, chives and tarragon — infused in the broth that serves as the base for garbanzo and kidney beans. Persian noodles are added and the soup is topped with whey, sautéed onions, garlic and fried mint.
The taste is a bit salty and likely a bit foreign on the tongue for newbies, but Persian Room manager and partner Farideh Nikkhahmanesh says people are usually surprised by how much they like it.
Persian Room Fine Dining has a loyal following in Tucson, where it opened in summer 2018, an outpost of Farideh and brother Nassar’s Scottsdale restaurant that has been been in business for more than 30 years.
Location: 9290 N. Thornydale Road
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Details: persianroom.com
Pho-tastic bowl: Pho at Miss Saigon
Pho, that Vietnamese noodle soup that has been all the rage in Tucson since Miss Saigon opened its doors 20 years ago, is still the reason folks visit its three locations — downtown at 47 N. Sixth Ave.; central at 1072 N. Campbell Ave.; and east side at 250 S. Craycroft Road.
Miss Saigon was the second Vietnamese restaurant to offer pho in the early 2000s; the other one is long shuttered, replaced by a handful of respectable pho establishments. But Miss Saigon has longevity on its side — and a beefy broth made from a stockpot of slow-cooked beef bones that depart a richness you can’t get from adding premade beef stock or MSG, says owner Bao Ma.
The #24, Pho Xe Lua with rare beef slices, beef brisket, tripe, tendons and rice noodles from Miss Saigon Downtown.
“The reason that our pho is so good is that we use a lot of beef bones and not a lot of MSG,” he explained.
The broth gets a lift from chicken base and is seasoned with coriander, star anise, fennel seeds, peppercorn, salt, sugar and Asian sugar. Garnishments include beansprouts, sliced jalepeño, lime, cilantro and Thai basil.
“We have a great following,” Ma said. “If they want pho, they typically come to Miss Saigon.”
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily at the east and central locations; the downtown location is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon to 9 p.m. Sunday
Details: misssaigontucson.com
The Tonkotsu dish with pork broth, thin straight noodles, menma, seaweed and other ingredients at Rajin Ramen.
Raging for noodles: Ramen at Rajin Ramen
Tucson was late to the ramen craze, but boy have we made up for lost time. One of the area’s hot spots is the four-year-old Rajin Ramen near the University of Arizona, where they take their ramen seriously — with a side of humor.
Novice to noodles? They offer a few light-hearted tips on how to consume ramen, which is not your mama’s noodle soup. Among them: Sip the broth first then attack the noodles with chopsticks — “Forks are for amateurs!” — to avoid the noodles becoming soggy and soft.
Rajin Ramen, which is a sister restaurant to Jun and Diana Arai’s popular east-side restaurant Ginza Sushi & Izakaya, has 10 varieties of ramen, from the house-favorite Tonkotsu Black Roasted Garlic in a pork broth that a manager said was the most user-friendly for newbies, to the Veggie filled with bok choy, corn, onions seaweed and pickled ginger among the garden of vegs swimming in the creamy vegetable broth.
Manager Abdullah “AJ” Tamimi won’t pick favorites, but he sounds like a poet describing dishes on the menu and the joy diners get from tucking into a steaming bowl that fogs up your glasses when you lean in for that first bite.
“It’s like a beautiful cacophony. You’ve got a bunch of different flavors from the pork to the veggies to the noodles themselves,” he explains, summing up ramen as the “epitome of comfort food — salt, sugar, carbs and proteins bundled into a spoonful.”
“You sit down and you feel like wherever you are at, a roof just sort of builds on top of you,” he said. “It’s so grounding. It’s absolutely phenomenal.”
Location: 2955 E. Speedway
Hours: Noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday
Details: facebook.com/raijinramen.tucson
Cocido, the traditional Mexican beef stew, is packed with tender beef and fork-firm vegetables at Micha's Restaurant.
Taste of home: Micha’s traditional cocido
Alex Franco’s nana always made him cocido, the traditional Mexican beef stew packed with tender beef and fork-firm vegetables.
“It’s more like tradition; it reminds you of home,” he said of the cocido he serves at Micha’s, his family’s longtime South Tucson Mexican restaurant.
At Micha’s, they start with a rich beef broth and chunks of tender beef that share the spotlight with carrots, corn, squash, potatoes and cabbage. The soup is one of several on Micha’s menu, and it’s hands-down the favorite among the loyal clientele, especially this time of year.
“When it’s really cold that soup sells,” Franco said.
Location: 2908 S. Fourth Ave.
Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday; until 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; and until 2 p.m. Monday
Details: michascatering.com
