Boston Market’s Soup Predictable, But Good

This week I reached out for a nice, hot bowl of chicken soup at Boston Market.

Here’s the blueprint: hand-torn chicken, carrots, onions and noodles in a thick, rich broth. Total calories: 80. Fat grams: 3.

Of course, low-fat food like this goes against everything I stand for. But I’ll cut soup some slack. That’s because I’m a soup nut. Homemade, frozen or in a can, I love soup. I laugh myself silly slurping noodles. I like to make noise when I eat. If I could soupify Thanksgiving dinner by running it through a juicer, I’d do it.

I love soup so much that my favorite television show is “Talk Soup.” Remember the great “Seinfeld” episode about the Soup Nazi? I rooted for the Soup Nazi.

Soupy Sales? Hysterical!

Knives and forks? Who needs ‘em?

So imagine my glee when I took a good hard look at the Boston Market drive-through menu and discovered soup. There it was, tucked ignominiously in the corner, below the rotisserie-chicken dinners and Extreme Carver sandwiches.

It never dawned on me to wonder whether soup in the drive-through is such a good idea. I mean, one little speed bump and you’ll wish you were wearing asbestos Jockey shorts.

And what is soup, the ultimate slow-cooked food, doing in a fast-food restaurant, anyhow?

Before you get your hopes up too high, Boston Market chicken soup is not Old World, classic Jewish penicillin, where the whole chicken is kerplunked, feet and all.

Boston Market serves industrial-strength, by-the-book, always-the-same chicken soup. That’s not a bad deal, either. There’s something to be said for predictability, especially when you’re eating.

I do have several glowing things to say about this chicken soup. First, you can’t beat the convenience. When the mood for soup hits, you might not have all day to sit by a stove, skimming off the fat and making sure the whole thing doesn’t boil away to nothing.

Boston Market’s soup is packed with large shreds of white and dark meat pulled from rotisserie chicken. I have a feeling these are yesterday’s chickens, but that’s all right. Soup always tastes better the second day. Here, you get second-day flavor automatically.

The noodles are so wide they’re almost square. The broth is so thick it’s almost gravy. The vegetables are fresh and cut big. And you can have all the crackers you want.

One small negative: Maybe Boston Market could hold back on the salt a little. Lots of people who eat soup have to watch their salt intake.

Compared to a bowl of Boston Market, Campbell’s Chunky Soup should hide its face in shame. I’ve had lumpier Coca-Cola.