Soup Dragon
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Location:
168 Capel Street
Visited:
over 2 years ago
Reviewed by:
Aoife Crowley
Rating:
For me, Soup Dragon is riddle wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in mystery and doused in not-very-nice soup. The question is, why do people eat here? It’s always busy and I simply don’t understand. Perhaps the cramped shop makes it seem fuller than it is.
Granted, it has a takeaway lunch deal of soup, fruit and bread for €3, but the soup is, to put it bluntly, horrible. There is also the option of eating in, but the three to four euro extra you have to pay to eat hunched in a corner isn’t worth it.
On my first trip, I tried the thai green chicken curry soup, which was perfectly and succinctly average. There was a pleasant coconut flavour, but far too much rice at the bottom of the bowl. A disappointing start, but not so dreadful as to put me off for good.
I soldiered on and tried the dahl indian vegetable soup. This was so spicy as to be unpleasant, and I couldn’t finish it because it made me feel ill. I overheard a waitress ask another customer if the dahl wasn’t too spicy for her, which gave me the impression that they knew themselves that the soup was disgusting.
In the interests of fairness and accuracy, I went on to subject myself to their carrot and corriander soup. In contrast to some of the more wacky options, this is a common combination. However once again, the soup failed to meet expectations. It tasted like the carrots had had a little cry to themselves as they were whizzed in the blender. Salty and watery.
One more last ditch effort was made to claw some bit of good out of Soup Dragon. Surely they could pull off cream of vegetable soup. Cream of veg is basically the industry standard. Theirs was grey. It tasted of burnt.
In fairness to Soup Dragon, they also have a wide array of sandwich and panini options. But given that the word “soup” is in their name, it seems only fair to base judgement on the soups’ quality. I did also try a brownie, which was slightly underdone.
Service was quick, but the waitresses seemed constantly stressed. All this combined to form the general feeling of despair I’ve come to associate with their little red sign.
