I get why things like hot dogs or bratwurst are readily available as streetfood, it’s logistically easy - but so is soup! You need like a pot, maybe two if you’re getting crazy with it, maybe some bread rolls and that’s it. It’s cheap to make, cheap to buy, you could get hot soup on a cold day to warm you up or something like a gazpach or okroshka on a cold day to have a chilling meal. They’re stupidly easy to make, all the ingredients basically cost zilch, very easy to adjust for all kinds of different dietary needs if you offer some sort of toppings optionally instead of throwing it all in there.
So why isn’t there more soup? It’s a style of meal you can find in basically any cuisine yet in all my travels I remember like two instances where I could just get a soup. What drives streetfood and why is soup shafted?
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It’s not really a thing in the global north, but in many places in the global south you’ll find street vendors selling soup and other whole ass meals.
First reason that comes to mind I think is how many (official or ersatz) public spaces to sit down and eat (you can’t really eat soup on the go) exist, and also how soup-centered the local food ways are.
I’ll go to my university’s library to see if they have anything on the anthropology of street food, and report back.
I’ll go to my university’s library to see if they have anything on the anthropology of street food, and report back.
Insane commitment, thanks
I do food studies (food justice, culture and aesthetics) research for a living lol, so it’s a bit of a tangent on my usual duties.
Besides, these are the kinds of questions that unless I get a satisfactory answer they won’t leave my mind.
Soup in a cup is a winning strategy. However being able to sit would be good as well
Food not Bombs vegan soup cup stays winning
I’ve seen soup in a cup working well, too. But I’ve only seen it in contexts where the people buying it are really strapped for cash, like people living in the street who really struggle putting together the few coins the cup of soup costs.
Soup is mostly water. Water is big and heavy. It can spill. Burns can be devastating. If you have a big pot you need a very flat stable surface to heat it.
Sausages can be cooked as you need them but you can’t keep topping up your soup all day. You need to make the correct quantity to begin with. Which means waste is likely.
you can’t keep topping up your soup all day
skill issue
Yeah, there’s logistical problems with, say, a soup stand: How do you deliver the soup to people? Reusable ceramic bowls? Those are gonna break eventually, needing replacement, and they’re also heavy as shit. Plastic? That’s not super good for environments, people will toss them in the trash, and plastic isn’t reusable in the long run on such a small scale. The ideal bowl would be like what Tim Hortons had for a while, bread bowls, but that itself is another logistical problem of producing your own bread bowls. Edit: Fuck me was this back in 2001? I’m turning to dust by the day
There’s logistical reasoning as to why you typically get soup at kitchens.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Half these criticisms feel odd. I can’t manufacture new hotdogs in my street food stand, they’re coming from somewhere offsite anyways, seems easy enough to replicate with soup.
Cooking is just sort of dangerous to begin with, I feel like “Stable surface, possibly a cage, for big pot” is rather more a solved issue
I think you might be on to something with the water thing though, that could be a problem. 800 hotdogs seems a lot easier to transport than 400L of soup.
It can be done and is done in Finland, or at least Helsinki – there are a bunch of stands where you can get a salmon soup by the docks. I think a would-be soup vendor in, say, burgerland, is up against cultural expectations about soup, namely that it comes in cans and sucks and you only eat it when you’re sick.
Salmon soup (lohikeitto) is common to find in most Finnish markets and restaurants. Usually exactly as you described, large vats of soup and bowls that are quickly served to each person.
Another perfect food on a cold Finnish winter day is rice pudding (riisipuuro). It has all the advantages of soup but it’s also sticky, so no concern of clumsily spilling soup while wearing thick gloves/mittens.
Ramen, pho, and other soup styles are also common streetfoods (not in Finland) for the benefits you mention
You should be able to check out soup at public libraries.
The problem probably lies with the fact that if there’s a soup and a hotdog or burger side by side people don’t buy the soup. Or that they’re willing to walk 200meters to get the hotdog/burger instead of the soup.
The vendors are just trying to maximise and getting whatever the audience is more likely to buy.
Would you say that streetfood is more of a treat or more of a part of life?
I know it’s a treat for me, but that’s genuinely because there’s so few “healthy” options going on with it that it sort of fulfills it’s own prophecy, I can’t eat a hotdog or a hamburger anytime I’m in town, I sure could eat a soup though. Healthiest option here, barring salads from fast food chains or such, is usually a falafel wrap and while that at least comes with veggies and no meat, it’s still deep fried and all.
I dunno, depends on the location? For some it’s definitely part of life like ones that post up near workers where your only alternative is driving. The streetfood in some cases becomes your regular lunch.
Like maybe that’s quite a “treat” lunch but the convenience of closer means they get to go sit around more rather than spend their break travelling to and from their alternative lunch options. Sure bringing lunch from home is the cheapest but I know I’ve been in that situation before and not everyone is making particularly sensible spending habit choices at all times.
I’m thinking more like urban center, pedestrianized spaces here honestly, not so much Ex-Urb with a foodtruck if that helps contextualize it.
Why do you think soup is inherently “healthy”?
I don’t?
This is largely cultural, though. Some places prefer soups over western street food, but just because the culture prefers soup overall, and eat them for almost all meals. This is not the case for the global North, in my experience.
Canned soup makes people think soup is mid. It’s tragic. Take the bones of a smoked chicken and make a soup and that’s not just lunch, it’s a whole dinner
everyone in here is wrong
a decent waterproof disposable bowl plus a spoon is much more expensive than the wrappings you give finger foods. and they gotta be nice, i don’t care how nice your soup is, if the container i got it in starts leaking or i get burnt i’m not having a good time
When I did eventually find streetfood soup I was just given what is basically your standard waxed paper soda cup except not filled to the top so you could hold it there and a flat wooden spoon which supermarkets here sell for like 0,30€ for their salads and that worked out fine.
gotta get 3 coffee cups of soup for a full bowl
if you wanted to be really wacky, only serve fine (as in the granularity) soups and don’t give people spoons at all. put a lid on it and it’s savory warm smoothie beverage
I feel like your average 500ml cup with 400ml in there and like a bread roll makes a fine quick streetfood meal. I don’t want like a gallon of soup
I don’t want like a gallon of soup
soup is supposed to make you feel like a big watery barrel. full of soupBut streetfood is supposed to starve off some hunger well enough that you can get an actual meal. I don’t wanna be a bloated big watery barrel of soup when I gotta bike home 5 kilometers. What if I capsize
What if I capsize
you’d be more buoyant
dont worry abt it eat some more soupI’m more worried about hitting the asphalt than drowning in it
All of south east Asia and a bunch of places in south America have street soup, even chunky ones. As far as I know many of them use polystyrene or paper containers.
It’s because you can’t huck fresh, piping hot soup at people’s doorstep in the morning.
that’s what I’m saying!
There’s soup in every corner store deli in the NE US
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Counterpoint: soup sucks
My condolences for being deprived of good soup all your life
Add it to the pile
Good soup is still mid at best.
In my experience, most soup places kinda suck. It’s not even a dunk on soup, just companies that specialize in it and aren’t phó/ramen tend to blow.
Chili tends to make a splash, but likely cause it’s better year-round and (being a thicker product) doesn’t slosh and splash as much, making it more portable. To add one more factor to consider, is the spoons and cups, making it more of a hassle for both stocking in a food cart as well as easy consumption while on one’s feet.
