Pick Up The Fork

A Serious Eater's Guide to Buenos Aires and Beyond

Loca for Sopa: Soups at Sugar Bar

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**SUGAR NOW ONLY SEASONALLY MAKING SOUPS, CALL AHEAD TO MAKE SURE**

In a country known for delicious guisos (stews), soup fails to make an appearance in the local food scene.  Should we blame Mafalda for the fact that it is almost impossible to find a delicious bowl of piping hot soup? Luckily, Sugar Bar (Costa Rica 4619) now offers three hearty soups on their winter menu: French Onion, Chicken Noodle and Chili. 

My idea of fun at Sugar doesn’t consist of a night of drunken debauchery – making out with a creepo Argie named Facundo who is only there to hook up with slutty study abroad students.  Been there, done that.  For me, fun equals a nice homely soup tasting.  This American bar in Palermo Soho already serves an array of good stuff: hamburgers, chicken wings, french fries, blue cheese salad, breakfasts, etc. and can now add homemade soups to the list.

There’s nothing like some French Onion soup to get your day going.  The flavor of the soup was very nice, right amount of seasonings, not too salty and packed with lots of onions. Generally, French Onion has a richer brown gravy-like color and while this version is much lighter, it’s still mmm mmm good.

This is not the type of soup you order while dieting, so I wish it came with a thicker layer of cheese on top, brown crusty cheese (mmmm brown crusties…). Burnt cheese iz da bomb. 
If I see one more person eat one of those dehydrated soup vomits in powder form, I may blow chemical pouched chunks all over.  One of the worst flavors is the “sopa de pollo” – basically it tastes like chemical water, no matter which brand you buy.  Thankfully, this chicken noodle soup is the real deal. A bowl of comfort. Exactly what you want to eat on a cold BA day, killer chicken broth filled with a hearty amount of chicken, noodles, vegetables and herbs.  The only complaint would be with the consistency of the proportions – while one soup came out with a hefty amount of chicken, another came out with a heavy hand of noodles. I like both chicken and noodles in my Chicken Noodle soup, but not too much of either one.

Last, but certainly not least, the chili.  For chili lovers and soup nazis, this is your soup. Talk about a bowl of comfort food.  This version is served with cheese, hot peppers and tortilla chips on the side.  The actual soup isn’t that spicy, safe for the Argentine palate, so ask for some extra chilis to kick that picante shit up a few notches.  Sugar also delivers to Palermo Soho, so for lunch and dinner you don’t have to brace the cold to enjoy.  So refreshing to find soup added to Sugar’s menu. I think I’ll order some chicken noodle right now.

*Updated June 2012: Instead of French onion, Sugar Bar is now making a bomb butternut squash soup with BACON.

Sugar Bar 
Costa Rica 4619
4831-3276

Author: ForkYou

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Comments

Comments

  1. How was the cheese on the French Onion soup? Gruyere or something else aromatic or bland standard? It kind of looks as if they did make it with white wine instead of red, that would explain the lighter colour.

  3. After reading your post this morning we headed over to Sugar Bar for lunch. We started off with the loaded nachos. I was encouraged by what looked like real cheddar in the picture of the chili. The nachos were bad–cold, bad chips covered with a god awful liquid cheese food and bland guacamole. But the real insult were the inedible spicy wings. My guess is they were frozen and then microwaved. Those we gave up on after one bite.

    The chili, however, was not bad! But all in all this was the worst meal I’ve had in a long time.

  4. Your blog is the ultimate expat survival guide for tastes of home. I’m probably going to be at the sugar bar tomorrow for Beerlingual, spanish. I’m probably not going to have the chicken soup yet and will probably try the chili or the french onion? Which would you pick? Is there a better one out of the two? BESO

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