Dear Soup Fan,
As you may have guessed, we soupmongers at Union of Genius have been very busy down the soup mines of late.
Yup, for the last six months we’ve been making soup like there’s no tomorrow. Or rather, like there’s a tomorrow where several hundred hungry people, both on your own doorstep and that of six or seven neighbours, are ringing your bell and telling you they need soup.
Since April, we’ve expanded. We’re now supplying six other cafes with soup, some with salad too, and what with the Fringe and a new University year, we’ve made lots of new friends.
We’ll being doing a few blogs on some of our chums in the near future, but if you can’t wait to hear more about them, why not go say hi? The guys and gals at BrewLab (South College St), Razzo Coffee (St Andrew Square), Printworks (Constitution St), The Third Man (Queensferry St), French Press (Dundas St), The Wee Boulangerie (South Clerk St) and Castello Coffee (Castle St) would love to see you.
Anyway, with so much soup going out, we needed some help. Scaled up soup making of this kind is a war to be fought on two fronts. So there have been several additions to the team, some sentient and others mechanical. (Bruce continues to bridge the gap between the two.)
If you’ve been in the shop recently you’ll have seen Jani working his magic on the soup kettles – and no one’s complaining about the extra charm and eye candy either. Meanwhile, newest recruit Cheryl is a vegetable chopper extraordinaire. You can hear the carrots squeak with fear when she arrives in the morning. Her addition to our recipe repertoire, leek, potato and pear, has already proved a hit so expect to see more soups from Cheryl very soon.
We’ve also taken on “AJ” and “AJ 2”, our twin induction hobs. Those guys can cook soup faster than a change in Edinburgh’s weather. Then there’s the Beast, our blender, which is 1 metre tall and can blitz more than 30 litres of soup in one sitting. It sounds like an aeroplane taking off when put on its higher settings.
So that’s our story. With our new toys and teammates, it’s like Christmas has come early. We’re having a lot of fun and we hope we’re sharing that with you. Speaking of which, we’ve got some lovely little gifts at Union for the soup lover in your life this Yuletide.
There’s soupons, a prepaid voucher of noms, which entitle the bearer to a soup with bread and cake and coffee, or a hot chocolate. They’ll be available in one, two or five meal versions. We also have a range of reusable heat-proof cups and bowls, in various sizes and funky colours, for holding coffee and/or soup.
We may have passed our first year at Union, and we’ll soon be wrapping 2012, but there is so much yet to come. And it’s going to feature a lot of soup.
Love,
Amy of Genius