When a business does only one thing, it must do it well or it will not last. But if it does that one thing very well, it can be highly successful. 1929 Soup Kitchens in downtown Troy, I predict, will be highly successful indeed.
As you might infer from the introduction, the menu is quite limited. There are four types of sandwiches and up to a dozen soups available each day, along with a few entrees and salads. On the other hand, there are lots of different kinds of coffee.
The prices at first glance are also a bit higher than one might expect for the food offered. A pint of soup with a hunk of bread costs between $3.50 and $4, and sandwiches run $5-6; a $10 fast-food lunch seems a bit steep to me. However, a soup-and-half-sandwich combo is available for roughly $7.
These factors are more than made up for by the quality of the food, though. The sandwiches are big, with piles of meat, veggies, and/or cheese on thick slabs of really good peasant bread. I opted for the "1929 Clam Chowder" as my soup, and discovered to my chagrin that it was Manhattan-style as opposed to the expected New England. But I tried it anyway, and enjoyed it quite a bit despite my bias against tomato-based soups. I look forward to trying some of the other soups there in the future.
My dining companion deemed the place "a bit too yuppie" for her tastes, and I could see her point. Maybe it’s all the coffee, or maybe it’s the prices, but you definitely get the impression that, despite the simplicity implied by the name of the restaurant, the target audience is definitely the jet set. The website calls it "a chain of Upscale Soup Kitchens," confirming my suspicions on that point.
Nevertheless, the food is quite good, especially on a cold day. Try it out if you’re looking for a change of pace from your usual lunch places.
1929 Soup Kitchens is located on the corner of Broadway and Second Street downtown. To get there, walk down the Approach and go around the hotel. The street you are facing is Broadway. Walk down Broadway; the restaurant is on the right at the end of the fourth block.
