Avenue Magazine Edmonton

Finally, someone has made good use of Twitter.

Soul Soup, a nook of a restaurant on Rice Howard Way, is tweeting to the hungry about its three soups de jour - one veggie, one fish and one meat - at @soulsoupofficial. Of the daily choices, at least one is always celiac-friendly. And all three are guaranteed to please palates as readily as they fill bellies.

A few years back, Soul Soup's owner, Carla Alexander, was working at Culina for restaurateur Brad Lazarenko. "I made soups for lunch at Culina and started selling them as takeout," says Alexander. "Brad knew I wanted to do more, and he said ‘I want to invest in you.'" The 2006 partnership between Alexander, Lazarenko and a third partner, Sal Di Maio, owner of Halo and Red Star Pub, resulted in this funky little soup place with giant pots, a few tables and great food.

Open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., it's a hit with downtowners. Just a few souls can dine in, with most opting for takeout. Lunch is the mainstay, Alexander says, "but we get a second rush at the end of the day when people buy dinner to take home."

She sells soups in containers of small ($4.75), medium ($7) and large ($11), as well as a 2.25-litre "family bucket size" ($21). Frozen soups are available in one-litre containers, too.

Alexander, who studied commercial cooking at NAIT, likes to try new soup sensations, but if you miss one of her creations, don't despair - the menu follows an approximate three-week rotation.

Next time you read a tweet about the jalapeño salmon tomato cream, venture in. The cream in the concoction soothes just as you start to feel the pepper. "It gets you sweating just a bit," Alexander says. And the beef barley horseradish cream is the perfect bowl of Alberta goodness. The barley isn't mushy and the horseradish adds warmth. Also try a bowl of African sweet potato with peanut and quinoa, which proves that the veggie selection isn't an afterthought. Each soup comes with a Portuguese bun from the Handy Bakery, or with freshly made cornbread for an extra $2.

Alexander names the soups according to ingredients or origin, rather than whimsy, so patrons know what to expect. But unlike the soups' names, the restaurant's epithet comes with a good story: "At Culina, I joked about my ‘soul soup.' It stuck, and when we were looking for a name for the business, Brad said, ‘Yeah, let's keep it as Soul Soup - it's solid,'" Alexander recalls. And it's accurate. Right down to the stock, the soups are made from scratch. "We put heart and soul into it."