Please note that since writing this blog post, Wolvenstraat has closed down
Didn’t someone write a self-help book about chicken soup? Something about nourishing the soul and restoring us to emotional health… or I might just be making that up. In any case, chicken soup is the quintessential comfort food, known to heal wounded hearts as well as the common cold. This must be some kind of in-born cultural-historical knowledge, because I’m pretty sure that my mother never fed me chicken soup when I was ill as a child. For some bizarre reason, she gave us cream crackers spread with Bovril. Don’t ask.
The slightly tenuous link I’m trying to make here is between the facts that a) I’m recovering from flu (apologies for lack of recent posts, incidentally) and b) last week I went to Wolvenstraat, where I had chicken noodle soup. In fact, the two are not really related at all, since I wasn’t ill when I went to the restaurant. But never let the facts get in the way, eh?
As noodle soups go, it was robust and chunky and satisfying with an Asian marinade (the chicken) and lots of vegetables. The noodles themselves were a little too reminiscent of those dried noodles which come in packets with unidentifiable coloured powder that you mix with water – it seemed a shame that it was the noodles that let down the soup, since they really should’ve been the simplest part. My dining partner had a stir fry of chicken and pine nuts served in lettuce leaves; she finished her plate. All in all, if you’re ill away from home, or your parents are unsympathetic types, you could do worse than chicken noodle soup from Wolvenstraat.