- welcome to new day cleveland. i'm david moss, and yes, i am crying a little bit, because, well, i've been chopping onions for you guys. this is a show all about soup, and someone said, "moss man, what kind of soup can you make?" and i said, "well one of my favorites is french onion soup", so we're going to make a little french onion soup for you today, but even better than that, this is a show all about soup. we're going to get soup everywhere. we're going to go to canton, akron, all around cleveland, try out some soups that you recognize and some very special soups that will turn you on to a whole new world.

things off right now, because natalie is over at the great lakes brewery. it's about soup! (celtic music) - i'm hanging out here at the great lakes brewing company's taste testing room, and while we're not tasting from the taps today, you know our soup is going to have their trademark beer in it, so let's head into the kitchen. okay, i'm a little excited because richard here has asked if i would be his sous chef. - i'd be honored. - right, just say you asked. - yeah, i asked, i did. (natalie laughs) - so what kind of soup are we making today? - we're going to do beer cheese soup, our dortmunder gold stilton cheddar cheese soup. flagship menu item, been on our menu since we've been in establishment since 1988. - [natalie] wow, okay. - kind of interesting, because our first beer and our first menu item kind of go together. so dortmunder gold being the first beer we ever brewed, and one of the first menu items being the stilton cheese soup, so i think that it's really apropos that

what we're going to do is we're going to start off right here. we got some butter going on in this pan. we've got about a pound of butter. it's got about a nice medium brown color. and to that what we're going to do is to add some rough chopped celery, carrot, onions, so if you wouldn't mind grabbing that for me here. - [natalie] okay, yeah. celery, carrot, and onions. i like that they're in nice, big chunks, too. - yeah, well, we're going to end up-- - is this gonna eventually be blended? - yeah, we're gonna end up-- - [natalie] aw man, everything gets mixed. - we're gonna get it mixed up, so it's not gonna have all this big flavors in there, so what we're gonna do, we're gonna do a little movie magic and pretend that we got this all softened down. probably about 10 to 12 minutes is what you want to do, and then what we're gonna do, we're gonna add some flour, - [natalie] okay. - so right back there. is we're taking the flour and we're gonna stir it in really nicely, because we're kinda creating... would you set that back down for me? - okay. - [richard] thanks. kinda creating like a roux. if you're making

or in this case, a thicker soup. so then we're gonna add to this, vegetable stock and heavy whipping cream, which i have over here. about two and a half gallons of vegetable stock and a whole gallon of whipping cream are gonna go in here. - so how many people is this gonna feed? this is a big size. - that's actually a great question that you asked that. what we're doing right now, we're making only a half batch of what i would normally be making. we go through about 30 gallons of this a week. - [natalie] are you serious? - yeah. so a batch is between 12 and 15 gallons. so this is a half batch, this'll give us about six to seven gallons and in a week we'll go through about 30 gallons of this soup. like i said, it's big time-- - [natalie] trademark. - trademark soup. - alright, so i think the sous chef's gonna step back for this one. - yeah, this is a little hot here. - [natalie] it's a little beyond my call of duty. - [richard] we'll let this cook. kinda let some of those flavors impart in there. and then, and now in goes the beer.

we pour the beer in after we've poured all the other liquid in here is because part of the brewing process is a boil. and a boil brings out the resins or the hops, thus making it a little bit more bitter. well, i've got 15 pounds of cheese i'm putting in here. - [natalie] 15 pounds. my eyes lit up. i get really excited about cheese. - [richard] and again, this is only a half batch. - [natalie] alright, so how are we gonna do this? are you pouring this all in? - [richard] i'm taking all of this cheese in here. we do use a little bit of regular blue cheese in it, just 'cause that kinda adds to the creaminess. whereas this definitely imparts so much more flavor into it. - and i'm guessing that's cheddar? - and this is cheddar. - okay. - so for this batch-- - you need help? no, you're good. - we'll see. yeah, i got it. so for this batch in particular, we have seven and a half pounds of cheddar cheese, which obviously that's not seven and a half pounds of cheddar cheese. and then we'll do two and a half pounds of regular blue. and then we'll do five pounds of the stilton. so we're gonna double that for a real batch, when we're making it for the customers.

i do have to do one thing. - [richard] oh, go ahead, try it, please. - [natalie] i'm gonna taste it. that cheese. i knew it was going to be amazing. it is, it is just the best. - [richard] it's a really good blue cheese. a little bit of paprika. sorry, i kicked the sous chef out of the kitchen. - it's okay. - [richard] black pepper. bay leaf. - this looks so amazing. - gives it a nice, it'll give it a nice... whisk up to get that cheese. starting to melt, starting to get imparted into the cream. - [natalie] so now how long will you let this go? - this will go for about another, maybe three to four minutes, just to kinda get the cheese a little bit more melted. then we'll we'll hit it up with a burr mixer to get it all smoothed out. (whirring) - [natalie] i don't know, if you haven't come here to great lakes brewing company and tasted some of this amazing soup, you're definitely missing out. and now you know

and if you need me to come in your kitchen and be your sous chef... so you think i will be good to help other out too? - probably. - probably. we'll see. it's time for the soup. (celtic music) give me that. you know what the best part about this is? they have the recipe on their website so you can actually make this at home too. alright, here it goes. it's hot, huh? - [richard] yeah, it's very hot. - i better watch myself. (celtic music) high five, dude. - love that beer cheese soup, but now we're gonna get back to the onion soup. french onion soup, which is pretty easy to make. shockingly easy to make. and not very expensive. i've got about three tablespoons of butter i'm gonna drop in there. and rather than use all butter, cause it needs about five tablespoons of fat, we're gonna use three tablespoons of butter and then we're gonna use two

use a nice olive oil. and you know what's nice about the olive oil too? it sorta keeps the butter from burning, because it moves that smoke point temperature up on the butter a little bit, so you can make your butter a little hotter. so what we really want to do now, is we're gonna cook the onions. because this is all about onions and onion soup, right? so what you need is four medium size onions, about two pounds. if you have five onions, it's not gonna make a big deal. this isn't one of those things you have to measure a lot. all i can say in the end is you want to have enough stuff so you have plenty of soup at the end. say five to six servings. four servings if you're gonna eat it like a meal, because it gets topped with croutons, it's got cheese, it's got all kinds of cool stuff. okay, so you got the butter in a nice shape right there. just when it starts to foam a little bit, you put in the onions. now when you put the onions in, you want to make sure you slice them thin, and you want to go all the way across the bottom. and you want them to start to sizzle a little bit, but believe it or not, we're gonna cook these onions for about an hour. about an hour, so we're

or 20 minutes with the top off. get this out of here. because those onions will make you cry, no doubt about that. i'm gonna put a little pinch of salt in here. we put a teaspoon of salt in later on, but i always say salt it along the way a little bit, and i think you get a little more flavors out of there. okay, so i got that in. now we're gonna put some thyme in here. now if you have thyme in the cabinet and it's dry thyme and it hasn't been sitting in there for three or four years. is it sorta fresh, like in the last year, put one teaspoon of dry thyme in there. but if you have fresh thyme, and i tell ya, it really makes a difference. you get some nice fresh thyme like this and rather than worrying about stripping it off and cutting it off, we usually just drop the four sprigs in here. we have four springs in there, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna bring this up till it just starts to sweat and it looks like it's gonna start to caramelize. now you can caramelize these real fast, but if you do, you're not gonna get the kind of sweetness we're looking for. we're gonna do, like i said, for about an hour. so you get it going like that. you hear it sizzling a little bit. and then you find a lid,

around here that's gonna work perfect for this, okay... here it is. coming your way. after 15 minutes or so, you put the lid on it, and you turn it down even lower. so you go to a... sorta like medium-low, then you bring it down to low for about an hour. and every few minutes you go back in there and you stir these around. that's the beginning. this is the hardest part, it takes an hour, and it's gonna be worth it, and it's gonna be delicious. we're gonna go to break right now and when we come back, we're gonna go to the greenhouse tavern and we're gonna try a soup that's nuts. - [voiceover] so i'm gonna garnish this soup just with a touch of chopped walnuts.

r. - check it out folks. welcome back to new day cleveland, very special show, we're talking about soup and that is one big pot of soup there, isn't it brian? - absolutely. - we got some stock going here. we're at the greenhouse tavern on east 4th street? - 2038 east 4th street, downtown cleveland. - beautiful spot here and brian's making some very special soup for us. he told me, i thought you said i was nuts, but the soup is about nuts, right? - [brian] that is a very good call. this is a nut soup. we're doing a walnut soup with a little bit of prosciutto, some brown butter, sage, just a lot of warming flavors from the northeast ohio region. it is the black walnuts, the prosciutto, a little bit of cream in there, it's gonna kinda warm the bones, cold out, you know?

we had black walnut trees in our yard. we had four of them and these black walnuts would fall and we never knew what to do with them. - well now we can fix that problem. we can make black walnut soup. or if you have some hogs on your farm, you can feed them the black walnuts and that's actually the way this prosciutto is finished is always on black walnuts. so that's why the inspiration of the dish is the black walnuts were fed to the pigs, then we take those and we turn it into a soup. - oh man, it's great. so did i read about this in some newspaper somewhere? - yeah, yeah, yeah. it made its way to usa today. awesome. we were super, super humble and really exciting to be in a publication like that. it made its way to usa today as one of the top five soups in the country. - and you got all these big pots. we're talking about your stocks and your soups, but we're gonna make it in this pot right here, huh? - [brian] absolutely, yes. - [david] i'll jump out of your way, brian. you go to work here. - [brian] not a problem. - show us how this happens. there's no butter in this, right? - no, no, no buttter. just a real nice, light soup. - [david] it always kills me, people make such a big deal about butter, but really

and just a little bit of butter per person. - yeah, absolutely, it's a four ounce portion, so you're talking about, maybe a teaspoon, tablespoon of butter. you know. and it's winter, right? so you're allowed to have a couple extra pieces of butter. couple extra pieces of prosciutto. - [david] that's insulation against winter. - [brian] and walnuts are healthy, right? - [david] yeah. - [brian] so getting those just a quick rough chop here. - [david] okay, so the soup, how much of that sage did you put in there? - this is just two, two-three sprigs of sage. - [david] and what's the base of it? what's the stock - [brian] the stock so at the greenhouse, what we do is we break down all our animals whole. we reserve all the bones, we then roast all the bones, and then we make a stock that takes about two full days to make. so it's a really rich, hearty stock. add in our cream. don't be afraid.

broken, but it's gonna come back together. we really, really want our soup to kinda meld and get to know each other, all the flavors come together. the walnuts, the sage, that prosciutto. (upbeat music) (whirring) - [david] here we go. - alright. - [david] so it's not a real thick soup, is it? - [brian] no, it's pretty, pretty thick. not real thick... - [david] heavy in flavor, i bet. - [brian] heavy in flavor. it's not a stew, though. and then just like anything, we're gonna finish with all the ingredients that were in the soup. a little chopped walnut, some beautifully chopped sage, just a touch more of that prosciutto right on top. walnut sage soup, greenhouse tavern. cleveland, ohio, downtown. - [david] beautiful. - [brian] thank you. - thank you. and now it's natalie. let's see what's cooking with her.. (mellow music) - when you're in tremont,

we're at lucky's cafe, brian, you guys are known for this tomato soup here. - yes, yes we are. it is, it looks delicious. and it's sitting in this i'm seeing a ton whole tomatoes that you have in there? carrots, onions, celery. - [natalie] what probably more unique than other tomato soups out there? is it a little more chunky consistency when it's done? - no, it's blended down at the very end of it. the difference for us, mostly, is cream. we use a lot of heavy cream in ours, and garlic and salt and just seasoned properly. - what kind of tomatoes do you use? can i just pull this out so people can see what this looks like in there? - roma tomatoes. - now do you think that has something to do with it too? is it all about the tomatoes you put in? - [brian] definitely, the type of tomato makes a big difference. - [natalie] alright, so you have some of the key ingredients right here laid out for us,

- simple enough. at lucky's cafe, here we focus a lot on local products. so it's local onions, celery, carrots a lot of the time. we tend to, we use just the basics. and we don't like to show off with fancy ingredients or fancy things like that. it's basic ingredients cooked right, just done the right way. that's our main focus here. - [natalie] i love that. so it kinda makes you think of homemade soup that your grandma or something would make. - [brian] i've been with lucky's for about three years now, but they've been making this soup here for about 10 years, i think. - it's pretty impressive because, like i said, you are known for this. and then you're also known for pairing this with a grilled cheese. but the grilled cheese are different every day with this? - everyday. we switch it all the time, to keep our regular customers excited about something different. so it's not always the same thing every day. - [natalie] alright, i want to see what kind of grilled cheese you're gonna be making for me today. can i go check that out? - [brian] yup, sounds good. - [natalie] okay. - alright, today we're gonna make a, the grilled cheese is on como bread. the recipe comes from

- [natalie] oh. - [brian] capture it being local. our cleveland yeast and our cleveland flavor. - [natalie] that's awesome. you always gotta add that in there. from italy to cleveland. - [brian] yes. (laughing) - [natalie] what kind of cheese are you putting on? - this is yellow cheddar going on right now. and then it's gonna be mozzarella. - [natalie] ooh. so when you're changing these up every day, are you changing up the cheeses? or is it more so the other additives, the other things you put on? - [brian] every part of it changes. we have different cheese, we have different ingredients. the only part that doesn't change very often is the bread. it's usually on como. (upbeat music) - here you it, the finished product. and i had the nerve of asking you for a spoon before. and i thought to myself, you don't use a spoon, right? - no, it's like a dipping sauce. - you just dip the grilled cheese in here. this looks so amazing.

(sandwich crunching) oh wow. that is the best grilled cheese tomato soup i've ever tasted in my life. that tomato soup... no wonder why everybody comes here. it's delicious, now you guys have... this is just one of the many items to try. - [natalie] what - [brian] we do mostly breakfast and lunch food. so it's like biscuits and omelets during the weekends, things like that. - [natalie] it is such a great little place. so many cute little, quaint, quaint little space. cute little tables here for you. you have wonderful pastries. it's all of the reasons why you should come here, but you definitely need to come and get tomato soup here at lucky's cafe in tremont. brian, thank you so much. bon appetit, right? - [brian] thank you. yes. (mellow music)

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- welcome back to new day cleveland, course this edition of new day cleveland is all about soup. delicious soups from all over the area. and of course, we've been making french onion soup here in the studio. and i started with, remember, four big onions. like two pounds of onions. and i put them in this pot with three tablespoons of butter and two tablespoons of olive oil. and then i threw those sprigs in there and we cooked this for just about an hour. and this is what those onions reduced to. and you can see they're sort of a cool, golden kind of color. and what's cool about this is there so sweet now, they're like sugar.

some recipes will tell you to put sugar in there and that'll sort of hurry the browning up, but i'm telling you, i think you're sorta wasting your time doing that because you really want to take your time and you get the most delicious flavors out of it. remember the thyme i put in there? all the little leaves came off of those little stems. so you want to take those stems out of there. okay, so that's in there, right? so now what we're gonna do is, we're gonna put a little of flour in here, like a little teaspoon of flour. because we don't want to make this like a thick soup. we want the, the cheese is gonna be in there, it's gonna be rich. and we're gonna put this, just sprinkle this in there. and we're not gonna make a roux or anything, but what this is gonna do is gonna help thicken things up a little bit. and i just, i put that in there, and you could do that for about a minute. but you want to make sure you stir it around enough that you don't get lumps. because you don't want, you don't want no lumpy onion soup. mm mm. in there, right? half cup of dry sherry. i think this is a giant ingredient in this thing. you get dry sherry, you don't have to get the most expensive one. if you get the most expensive one, it's around 15 bucks. if you get the good cooking one, like this one, this taylor

it's about nine dollars. so it's really worth it. use a half a cup of this. so you can drink some of it if you want, or you can just put it away for the next time you make this onion soup. and the trick to making this onion soup is only time. it's not very difficult. it's just about the time you spend doing it. okay, we're gonna stir that in there a little bit. get that going. we're gonna put the whole teaspoon of salt in there. i'm gonna put cracked white pepper in there. and the reason i use white pepper in there is, i just don't want to see the black pepper floating around in there. because you're gonna see, when we make this onion soup, it's not gonna be like that onion soup you see sometimes in restaurants. it comes out and it's real dark and brown, almost burnt and the onions are whole. you see how these onions are already turned into almost, almost like mushy slush. so they're gonna become part of the soup, and that's gonna make it thick. see how that is? next time you get to the bottom of that restaurant onion soup, check it out. it's gonna be stringy and it's gonna be burnt, because they just don't have time to stand around

okay, so we got that in there. and now we're gonna use about a quart, this will be a quart, of beef stock. so rather than sit and glug it, i'll just put a little hole in it there and see it comes out way faster. so this is a quart. you got a little bit of volume with the onions. and so you're gonna get, like i said, four or five big servings, six servings that are maybe a little smaller. but it's very rich. because what we're gonna do is, we're gonna take this french bread here, and we're gonna chop this up a little bit. we're gonna toast it. and then we're gonna top it off with gruyere cheese. gruyere cheese is the big secret. because some people put provolone, they'll put swiss cheese on it or something, but if you grate this cheese and put it on there, it's worth the money. it's a little more expensive than the other cheeses, but as you will see in the end, it is gonna be terrific and delicious. okay, so we got everything lined up.

these toasted up, we're gonna grill this cheese over the top of it, we're gonna put it in a little crock like that, and it's gonna be onion soup like you may have seen before, but better than you've ever tasted before. i guarantee you. more of new day cleveland, our very special show about soup, right after the break. (upbeat music)

welcome back to

our very special show about soup. it's all about soup and we've got a little soup boiling here. this is a french onion soup. but over on the west side in rocky river, it's natalie at salmon dave's. (slow music) i think that when everyone thinks of where they can get some amazing seafood, they think of this place. we are at salmon daves, i have shawn with me, and we're starting off with a soup that's a starter probably for a lot of people that come in here, because i feel like everyone loves your lobster bisque. - it's pretty well known, yeah. - it's well-known. it's award winning! - yeah, that it is. - so, i just feel like it's something that seems simple, but yet might not be as far as putting it together. there's a few items, a few ingredients that take a little bit of preparation and time. but other than that, once you have those things ready, you're ready to go. it's a pretty easy dish to throw together. - so he invited us back in the kitchen. he's gonna show us how he whips something like this up. at least a few of the steps, right? - i am. - [natalie] alright. - we start with these beauties right here. this is a one and a quarter

i've got this steamed off already and ready to go. don't take the rubber bands off until after it's cooked. - [natalie] yeah. key, uh... - [shawn] so i'll remove these and i'm gonna show you real quick because we use the meat, obviously in the soup, and the shells are a very important ingredient, 'cause we that we then reduce down. - yeah, we use the shells, we smash them up, and kinda like you would any other stock with mirepoix and aromatics. when you have a whole lobster like this, the way you deconstruct it, simply twist off the tail. generally have some goodies inside that you gotta get rid of there. - [natalie] don't want that in the soup. - no. and we'll twist off the claws and the knuckles there. and this is gonna house all our meat. we're gonna go through and separate that and that's what we're then gonna use in this soup so that we have nice chunks of lobster. - okay. so it turns out looking like this in the end? - correct, yeah, that's our finished product. this here we're gonna reserve and we're gonna use this

the shells that remain after we remove the meat. real easy to do here. the tail, i just split it right in half. 'cause we're just gonna go in there and take the meat out. - [natalie] look at that. - [shawn] just like that. and we'll clean that up a little bit. rinse it off. you don't want to rinse it too much, 'cause that's all good flavor. from the top side, you've got this bottom hinge right here. we're gonna go in from the top and just give it a good, good crack. and then pop it like that. if we use this, snap that, we'll get that little cartilage out of the meat there. it should come out fairly clean. - [natalie] look at that. home trying to do this too. - [shawn] so then what you separate that, and that will pop right out. you'll have a nice, intact claw. alright, i've got a hot pan on the stove here and we're gonna start. to make just a small batch. obviously when we do this in the restaurants, we do five gallons at a time, big stock pots, that whole thing. - [natalie] gotcha. - so start off with little bit of canola oil in there. you don't want to use olive oil,

it's gonna burn your product, 'cause we do get some heat going here. little bit of butter in the pan as well. and then we're gonna go in with our onions and our celery. quick saute. it doesn't really matter how all this stuff is chopped, because you're gonna puree it at the end. so it won't be visible, or that texture won't be present. and saute that for about four or five minutes. - [natalie] okay. - [shawn] next thing to go in, a little bit of tomato paste, paprika, and cayenne pepper. i'm not gonna use all that cayenne, just a little bit. just a little bit of cayenne so that you have a spice on the bat. we stir than until that tomato paste kinda coats everything and takes over. you can see it already starting to glaze the bottom of the pan. and as that glazes the bottom of the pan, it's gonna almost start it stick. that's what i want to happen. alright, now i'm gonna go

about three ounces for what i've got going on right here, but you see it's just enough to cover the bottom of the pan. important thing when you're making a lobster stock, it's just like making a chicken stock or a vegetable stock. you're going in with vegetables and aromatics. to crush those shells up. i take a meat mallet and really... 'cause the oils are the flavor, that's what you want out of there. that's gonna flavor your stock. so that's what i have here. and we go in with our stock. (soft music) for this recipe, i go in with about a quart of cream. alright, so we've let that reduce for a while and this is the finished product. if you want to look inside there, when i talk about viscosity, you see that whisk making ribbons? see those ribbons in there? that's kinda what i'm looking for as my target. - [natalie] so that's a final test before you serve it? - yeah, that's about the viscosity that i want. from producing a little bit of drag and we're gonna top that with a little bit of the lobster

and i like to put that right on top, so that the guests can see that there's chunks of lobster meat in there. they sometimes get lost and coated in the soup. we have a wide selection of fin fish and shellfish. barrel island salmon, scallops, walleye from the great lakes. we've got red fish coming on our new orleans promotion. of course lobster. you name it. not just seafood, great steaks as well. - [natalie] i love this, i'm gonna end with this. and i think i just learned how to make seafood bisque. you think mine's gonna be as good as yours? - i think so, i think you can do it. you were paying attention. - you have a lot of faith in me. (both laughing) thanks, shawn. oh my gosh. oh my gosh. - [shawn] rich, creamy. - [natalie] mmm. - [david] and now over to tower city for susy's soup and deli. they've got it all. (bouncy music) - here at susy's, we

of soup and chili and chowders. we don't feature them all every day, of course, but we do make them fresh here in house. and we serve the community, cleveland community here. fresh wholesome food with lots of love, compassion, care, concern. our chefs start getting in, owner/head chef, he gets in about five, 5:30. and then the next chef gets in about six. and then another one at seven. and so they're cooking pretty much from six am till one o'clock. - five pounds of cheddar. 15 pounds of american cheese. - [dave] we offer our large variety all year long. we have a soup schedule so that every day of the week you can get beef chili, chicken noodle, turkey chili, veggie

and then we have a rotating list for which day of the week it is. - by using this steam table here, i can put on about 15, 20 different kinds of soup. so that, as we run out during lunch, we're constantly able to refill, refill, refill, so we don't run out and customers aren't disappointed. it's one of the challenges to make sure i have everything hot, ready to go when the customer wants it. - [dave] we do have seasonal changes. for our soups we'll and some additional cold that's where we come in more with our fruit salad and pasta salad, and more deli-like stuff. but surprisingly enough, some people, we do actually still sell a lot of hot soup during the summer. the deli aspect of the restaurant is a very crucial to

fresh every day. from the salads, all the ingredients are prepped every morning. we make hot sandwiches. our grilled cheese, we just sells tons of grilled cheese. grilled cheese and soup combinations are very popular. (laughing) as anybody would guess. deli sandwiches, hot corned beef sandwiches, it's just nonstop. we serve lots and lots and lots of soup though. that's out bread and butter here. (upbeat music)

- we're here on west 25th street at nate's deli and restaurant. i have ghassan with me. so when you think of this place, normally you might think of traditional lebanese food. they have amazing lebanese food here, which we're gonna talk about in a second. but first, what's so amazing about this place is that you guys are really known for your chicken noodle soup! how is that possible? - i'm not sure, but the people have spoken, and if it's the soup, it's the soup. it's a homemade

it's made with fresh boneless, skinless chick breasts, celery, carrots, some onion. there's some parsley flakes, you'll see in there floating around, the green things. one of the secret ingredients in there is a cinnamon stick. - cinnamon stick. - which gives it a little bit of a twist, makes it a little bit different than your traditional chicken noodle soup. and then there's other stuff in there that we won't get into. - that you can't tell, which makes it so good. i have heard there are people that write about this place and say it is the best chicken noodle soup they've ever had. - [ghassan] it's good, you know, chicken noodle soup is a very comforting food, especially at this time of year. it's very popular and people come in just for the soup sometimes, which is fine with us. but we're here for the other things. but if it's the soup, it's the soup. - [natalie] well, honestly, you know that we couldn't do a show about soup without having some amazing chicken noodle soup. so i have to taste a little bit of this. - [ghassan] dig in, please. - [natalie] i have to see what all of this hype is about. (middle eastern music)

i see what people are talking about. i can taste the cinnamon in it, just a teeny bit. i would have never figured that out unless you said something. the right amounts of everything mixed together. egg noodles in there, just the right amount of every ingredient makes a dish so delicious. - the chicken is so good. and the noodles, one thing i hate about chicken noodle soup at a lot of places, is there's never enough noodles. - well you can always ask for more noodles. a lot of people have been getting just broth lately. i know that's a hot trend now. it's very popular, is people just drinking broth instead of getting the whole soup, some of that also. - but you have plenty of noodles in there. - we'll give you as many - what made you guys want to kind of add these, something like this as an element to your menu, aside from the lebanese food? - you know, it's something that's always been on the menu. we have the traditional lebanese food, american food too. so there's literally something for everybody no matter what their taste might be. - [natalie] and then i love, we put a few other because, again, that's what these guys...

- these are our staples. but the soup is great. - you have hummus. fattoush are the two biggest things that we have. very popular and they're very... you know, it's just, it's us. of hummus and fattoush. - [natalie] and again with your ingredients, is all so fresh. there's no shortcuts when making good hummus. you've gotta soak the beans, you gotta boil them, you gotta mix everything the right way. a lot of people do it out of cans now, that's a no-go here. everything's cut we get our ingredients from the westside market, which is perfect, 'cause we're in the right location for it. and it gets mixed made to order. so if you don't like tomatoes, you don't get tomatoes. if you don't want something in it, we can keep it out. a lot of places just have it premixed. - how long have you guys been here? - we're on 27 or 28 years now. - are you serious? that long. - [ghassan] for a long time. - and it's kind of like a hidden gem in the middle of ohio city here. we're right on, again, the main drag, and they have all these new bars and everything else popping up here, but i feel like this is the little slice of heaven, this little piece of paradise where it's very quaint and relaxed. - nothing's changed here

as far as this place goes. the whole neighborhood has evolved completely, but we've kind of just maintained a steady pace of this is what we have and this is what the locals like. there's many times where i've wanted to remodel the whole place, but people say don't touch it. it's got something to it. - [natalie] it makes it unique it makes it special. - [ghassan] it makes it unique it works. - well i've already said now, i've found a new place for lunch. you're really close to the station, so i'm gonna be coming here for lunch all the time. - we'll be waiting for you. - getting some of this amazing soup and i am going to try some of this fattoush salad now. thanks so much. - [ghassan] my pleasure. (mandolin music) - okay, we've got out onion soup in a position now where it's about to be put together, put into the oven, and finished, and terrific, it's boiling, bubbling, ooh it looks good there. i'm gonna turn this off, because we don't need it to cook any more. i love the bertazzoni man, it works great. okay, there we go, we've got our soup going, right. so now we're talking about croutons. so here's what we're gonna do for croutons.

if it's little one like this, you're gonna need two croutons for every bowl. and if it's a little bit bigger one, you might only need one. so what we're gonna do, is we're gonna cut them like this. and we're gonna put them in a toaster oven, or in a broiler. so that's pretty easy to see, you can figure that out, right? and i cut them on a little bias, you see that? you know why? because i get a little more surface on it and when we toast it, if you don't toast it, it's not gonna float, it's gonna sink. so we toast it and that way it's gonna float on the top of our soup. so we toast it and then when it comes out of the oven, what i do is this, get a little more flavor. i take a piece of garlic like this, i cut off the stem side, take that paper off of it, of course, and here's some i've got toasted already. and i take out my little toasted croutons and i just give it a little rub. that's enough. just a little bit. if you do a whole lot, it's gonna be very, very, very garlicky. so you don't want that, right? okay, so i've got that. so i'm gonna put some soup in the bowl. i've got my oven at 450,

let's put some soup in the bowl. i gotta tell you, it smells pretty good. i think we're in pretty good shape here. and then we're gonna put our crouton on the top. and here's the secret everybody. gruyere cheese. we talked about this a little bit earlier. gruyere cheese comes from switzerland. it's a swiss cheese. it's a little expensive. and this is the most expensive thing about this whole meal. it is about $15 to $19 a pound, and you're gonna need about 10 ounces of it. so it's the most expensive ingredient in this soup, 'cause you've got four onions, that's nothing, right? a little bit of sherry, you know that's $8 for the bottle and you can use it like four or five times. but this, you're gonna use a little bit of this. and i gotta tell you something. this will make your head spin, it is so delicious. okay, so we've got that much. so that's enough for a couple bowls right there. so what you do with this is, you don't drop it all over the place. you drop it right on top, like this. and we take this baby and

or our 450 degree oven, we put it in there, and when it comes out, it's gonna be melty, toasty, and ready for natalie to taste it. how cool is that? we have a whole lot more soup coming your way, right after the break.

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- now when you think of comfort foods, scott, you think of, in my opinion, something that really warms the soul. and what better thing than soup, right? - soups, stews, slow-cooked meals. - so that's what they do here at the stew pot kitchen in akron. we're on main street. this place has been here for how long? - this is our sixth year. - and what made you want to get into selling soup? - (laughing) i'd been a stay at home dad for nine years, and when my son was ready to start kindergarten, i could do anything i wanted. but my resume was outdated, places didn't exist any more. and all i'd learned how to do was cook and change diapers and garden. and my wife was like, well--

something that i could continue? - diapers? i was done with diapers. gardening's only a six months a year job. so i was looking at starting a restaurant and all i could afford was some soup kettles. couldn't afford the big, expensive hood and all that. and when i was figuring out how much it was gonna cost, i basically stumbled into a place and next thing you know... - [natalie] voila. - [scott] we're opening a restaurant and we got four kettles, then we got six, then we got ten. - so how many do you have now? - right now we've got 10, we've got four in reserve, and then we've got a whole bunch more back there for when we go out and do concessions events. - so let's see some of these soups. tell me about some of these soups. i mean, i feel like what you're gonna get here is not gonna be necessarily what you're gonna find anywhere else. - right, well, half of our menu stays the same every week and half of it changes. we always have our spicy beef and bean chili. - is this the chili? can we pull out the spoon just so you can see in there? - [scott] yeah. and this is a little different in that it's got our own seasoning blend and some hot italian sausage in it. let's see if i can find some hot italian sausage. - [natalie] i like that you add hot italian.

because i'm italian. - [scott] no? (natalie laughing) of course i couldn't find any. - [natalie] you know what? don't worry about the sausage, we know it's in there. what about next to it here? - this is our version of a loaded baked potato soup, but it's actually vegetarian. the original recipe, like all of our recipes, we've got about four or five hundred, the original recipe called for butter and cream and all kinds of things and we found that taking all that stuff out actually not only made it healthier, but people liked it better. and it was a lot more cost effective. - okay. - so we've got that and it's basically just like a loaded baked potato, except there's no bacon. - [natalie] woah, this is why you do this and not me, huh? - potato, cheese, garlic powder, sour cream. - i'll let you close that. i probably should let you be touching all the soups here. what about next to it here? because what i see on there is broccoli cheese, and that's one of my favorite types of soup. - well this the only soup that changes weekly. every week we either have beer cheese soup or a broccoli cheese soup. - ooh, both sound so good.

and it was hard work. but we finally settled on blue moon wheat ale. and we like their summer honey moon or their harvest moon in the fall. but it's blue moon wheat ale soup and this week we have broccoli cheese soup instead. - [natalie] alright, i see the bowl here. can i try some? what's in it? i'm sorry. - [scott] this is broccoli florets, broccoli puree, broccoli broth, and cheese. and that's all it is. - [natalie] so i feel like that obviously you're not adding as many crazy different and that makes it, as you said, a healthier option for most people. because i know broccoli cheese normally isn't the best option when you're thinking about what type of soup to get as far as health-wise. - no it's not, but you know, just like the potato soup, we took out all of the different, you know, cream and the milk and even the butter and we found that just keeping it simple tends to make it more flavorful. - it's gonna be really hot, huh? - and it's broccoli and it's cheese. it's probably pretty hot, yeah. - oh, it's gonna be scalding, but i gotta taste just so you know.

- [scott] yeah. - are you sure there's not extra ingredients added? this is way too good. - after almost, well, we're in our sixth year, we haven't been able to take it off the menu. - there's so many. we just named a few of them here for you. chicken noodle, beef stew, chicken and gravy. and then you also do sandwiches? - [scott] yeah, the chicken and gravy is actually we do what we call a stewed sandwich. in the summertime, nobody says, "hey, let's go get hot soup or hot stew! so what we've done is we do sandwiches, paninis, hot dogs, slovenian kielbasa. and we do these chicken and gravy, you know, things that you would cook in a crock pot or something like that. sometimes we'll have slow cooked roast beef sandwiches. and it's the kind of thing that you just, you have to ladle it on into your hoagy bun. - sounds delicious. - it's a sandwich that's great - come check him out here on main street. the stew pot kitchen, see scott and the rest of the gang, get a great cup of soup, warm the soul. and have a sandwich our two while you're at it as well. scott, thank you so much. - [scott] sure.

made every day. favorite restaurants. (slow piano music) - okay natalie, i know you've been testing and sampling a lot of soup around the country here. i have, i've been all over the place. - some really good stuff and some really creative stuff? - oh yes. - well while you were away, i made french onion soup the old-fashioned way where you cook the onions for an hour and they're real caramelized and good, and it's got a little and the secret is gruyere cheese on top of the french bread crouton. gruyere, g-r-u-y-e-r-e for you that don't know how to spell it. so you can find it. - i'll tell you what, i didn't know how to spell it, but i could tell you that it smells extremely good. i love the smell of certain cheeses and it smells amazing. - i've been waiting an hour for you to test this and taste this for me. - okay. - so you tell me what you think of this, okay? - here we go. let's get a little bit of the cheese. - she doesn't mess around, does she? she always gets a pretty big bite, right?

- heavenly. - [david] i've got to try it to. - [natalie] oh, it just warms you to the bone. it's just the right amount of sweetness. - no sugar in it either, it's just all that-- - no sugar? - it comes from just from the onions. pretty good stuff, huh? - i don't know, david, some of these local restaurants might want to start putting this on their menu. - it's gonna be your secret and my secret and your secret out there, because we are putting this recipe on the website so you can try to make this at home. and it is so simple, doesn't cost a lot of money, like i said, invest in the gruyere cheese, because that is the secret. did you have a good time? - i had a wonderful time. who knew you could love soup so much. - i love soup and i love this onion soup, because it has a little love in it. - that is so true, and hey, we love you all and we will see you on the next new day cleveland. - so long. soup! (slow music) - [voiceover] coming together. one beautiful dish. - [voiceover] we're

and just give it a good crack. and then pop it like that.