Soup is enjoyed year-round and appears in many forms across seasons. Fast-food and fast-casual chains offer soups ranging from one-off recipes to extensive stew selections. Wendy's chili and Noodles & Co.'s chicken noodle exemplify single-signature offerings, while Panera Bread and Jason's Deli produce broader soup menus. Some chains like Potbelly and Firehouse Subs also offer soups. Soups were purchased from multiple restaurants and evaluated for broth integrity, ingredient quality, and generosity. Rankings were produced from those evaluations. Firehouse Subs' chicken and dumpling placed tenth and was described as neon yellow, broth-forward, diluted, and lacking substantial chicken.
A few chains out there tease us with a one-off soup recipe. Take Wendy's famous chili, for example, or Noodles & Co., which stays in its comfort zone with bowls exclusively full of chicken noodle. Others stir the pot with a hearty smorgasbord of stews. Cafe and deli-style joints like Panera Bread and Jason's Deli tend to dominate in this arena. But a few others, like Potbelly and Firehouse Subs, don't back down from the challenge.
As a soup lover myself, I recently paid many of these restaurants to see how their soups fare. And today, we're slurping and ranking them all, from soup to nuts. I judged each one based on the integrity of the broth and both the quality and generosity of everything swimming inside - I wasn't about to applaud a soup that felt barren. Above all, I was searching for the one that wrapped all my taste buds in the warmest and coziest of hugs.
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