5 Great Gourmet Soups for Your Café

Adding a line-up of gourmet soups to your café is a great way to please customers throughout the year. When your café features traditional soups with gourmet twists, you'll set yourself apart from your competitors and increase the likelihood of offering something new to your restaurant patrons. Here are some gourmet twists on five classic soups for your café. Remember, to make and serve great soups all you will need is a few good stock pots, soup ladles, and attractive soup bowls. 

Creamy Tomato Bisque

Tomato soup is one of the most popular soups featured at a café. This flavorful soup is perfect when paired with a grilled, cheese sandwich. However, plain tomato soup is rather dull, so you can give this dish a gourmet twist by turning it into a bisque. Just add some heavy cream and some grilled, pureed tomatoes, and you can provide customers with an indulgent, satisfying meal.

Broccoli and Cheese Soup

Pairing vegetables with cheese in to make soup is nothing new, but you can astound guests with your gourmet flair by adding a little bit of the unexpected to this common soup. For broccoli and cheese soup, skip the cheese-flavored cubes and add real melted cheese. Adding gourmet cheese such as muenster cheese makes this traditional soup sound interesting and taste delicious.

Gourmet Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken noodle soup is traditional and flavorful, and it's also easy to turn this soup into a gourmet culinary experience. Make your own noodles from scratch, fill the soup with shaved rotisserie chicken, and add a variety of in-season vegetables for a delicious and visually stunning gourmet soup.

Savory Squash Soup

Butternut squash, zucchini, yellow squash, pumpkin and acorn squash have become quite popular as pureed soups. Their bright, appetizing colors make the soup visually interesting, and these soups are perfect when seasoned with clove, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, curry, or other non-traditional spices.

Chili and Chowder

There's no reason why a soup that is superbly comforting and casual cannot also be gourmet and impressive. Chili and chowder are two soups that are incredibly popular among consumers.  When a customer orders a steaming bowl of chili, he knows that will be receiving a hearty meal that will drive the chill out and satisfy his stomach. If chili and chowder seem to blasé for your café, you can add gourmet ingredients to give these casual soups a face lift.

For example, clam chowder is a popular type of chowder. Instead of this normal menu item, though, consider making it gourmet with the addition of crab meat, lobster meat, or scallions. Top-notch seafood chowder sounds much fancier than traditional clam chowder. With chili, the opportunities are endless. You can add gourmet meats such as bison or lamb to make the chili sound more interesting, or add interesting spices such as curry, Garam Masala, or clove for a unique twist on a common dish.

A quality line of gourmet soups can do wonders for your café. Soups with delicious and aromatic ingredients, or an unexpected twist, will show customers that your café is a few steps above the average food establishment. Most of these soups are simple to prepare, and you can easily turn a plain soup into a gourmet soup with a few non-traditional additions.