More Than Just Chicken Soup
Keep strength and sanity with winter warmers from around the world
We're in full-on defensive mode.
Winter has finally rolled into town, and it's brought with it the cold, the wind, the rain and the (inevitable) snow. Every one of your officemates has come down with a particularly Victorian strain of typhus, and your Uncle Jeff and his horrible girlfriend are coming to visit in three days. You have a week to buy all of your gifts before you fly home and you need to get something for the Secret Santa that won't sink directly to the bottom of the swap pile. Stress levels are at an all-time high, and your immune system is about to disintegrate under the strain.Times like this, your mom would tell you, call for chicken soup-and lots of it. Whether you're desperately clinging to health or fighting valiantly to get it back, a hot bowl of soup soothes the nerves, replenishes vital stores and goes down easy. But while you might be in need of some easy comfort, you're still a New Yorker; simple chicken noodle just isn't going to cut it anymore.
Thankfully, there are a thousand culinary traditions in this city, and each one has its own mothers pushing soup that's light years away from the dehydrated Lipton's packets your own mom used to pour.
The friendly ladies at Sheng Wang (27 Eldridge St., betw. Canal and Division Sts.) make two things: dumplings and noodles. The slightly below-street-level restaurant is frill-free, but the homey sight of a couple of cooks folding dumplings at one of the center tables, mixing bowls of the porky stuffing to the left, enormous sheet trays of the finished product to the right, eases you right in. If you can, the dumplings are worth it; if you're still a little shaky, a simple bowl of roast duck noodle soup will set you on the road to recovery.
Your soup comes in an enormous metal bowl, fragrant steam pouring out from above a tangle of noodles, tender slices of crispy-skinned duck and vitamin C-laden bok choy. You can get your noodles hand-pulled, for maximum slurping, or "peeled," small, spaetzle-like nuggets that are sliced off a hunk of dough directly into the boiling pot. No brainpower-sucking manual dexterity required; if you can hold a spoon, you're in business.
If you're fending off an imminent collapse or have recently recovered from one, you'll want something a little more hearty. Though Veselka (144 2nd Ave. at 9th St.) has lost some authenticity points in recent years as more and more people discover the Soviet charm of next-door Ukrainian East Village Restaurant, for all the college students eating 3 a.m. pancakes and pieriogi are an equal number of babushkas and ex-pats.
Their borscht is one of the reasons; the rich, sweet beet broth, thick with chunks of potato and shreds of the roast pork that also appears in the bigos (hunter stew) is straight from the old country. Topped with sour cream, each overstuffed spoonful is guaranteed to drag you back to the land of the living.
But should you be too weak for any cultural adventure at all, retreat to your bubbe's embrace at Kutsher's Tribeca (186 Franklin St., betw. Greenwich and Hudson Sts.). This new venture aims to bring the Catskills to Downtown Manhattan, classing up the iconic middle-class Jewish experience. Success seemed improbable, but the matzo ball soup doesn't lie; it's the platonic ideal of this original comfort classic. No deconstruction, reconstruction or molecular shenanigans have taken place to challenge your weary imagination, and the lighter-than-light matzo, egg noodles and impossibly chicken-y soup will ring all your childhood bells.
Mothers from every culture understand the stress of the winter season, whether they're fighting their way across the frozen steppes or frying latkes for screaming cousins and picky in-laws. With their secret-weapon soups in your arsenal, December doesn't stand a chance.
By Regan Hofmann