Sudbury's Elgin Street Mission celebrated sensational soups on Friday with an outdoor cooking and soup-tasting event held in a downtown parking lot.
More than a dozen local restaurants and eateries took part in the challenge, setting up soup tables despite the freezing weather.
Mission Executive Director Amanda Labreche said she was pleased that so many local eateries stepped up to offer up so many different types of soups and winter comfort dishes
"So today, we're having our Sensational Soup event down at the Elgin Street Mission,” Labreche said. “It's an awesome event where people can come down and try soups from all these different vendors. We're having a competition to figure out what soup is the best, and all donations go to the Elgin Street Mission."
While several dozen members of the public lined up to try the different soups, a panel of judges stood by to sample each offering.
Among the hungry were many notable tasters, including Sudbury Food Bank representatives Daniel Xilon, Geoffrey Lougheed and Joe Drago, Mission rep Gerry Lougheed and Mayor Paul Lefebvre, who didn’t act as a judge but called himself the “soup master” who helped emcee the event.
The event attracted dozens of downtown workers, friends and supporters of the various restaurants involved.
Participants included the Apollo Restaurant, M.I.C. Canadian Eatery, the Colonial Sports Bar, the Daventry Kitchen and Bar, Ukrainian Seniors Centre, the Sikh Temple, Pizzeria Roma, East Side Mario's, Fionn MacCools, the Blue Door Soup Kitchen, Kuppajo Espresso Bar, Radisson Hotel/Pesto's, Gus' Restaurant and Wander Food and Wine.
With the temperature hovering at -7 (but feeling more like -14), the judges put aside any discomfort and sampled each of the steamy dishes, which included spicy choices, savoury cream-based soups, dishes thick with vegetables, and the winning selection from the Colonial Sports Bar in Coniston, Home Run Soup, a popular broccoli, cheddar cheese, lasagna-style offering from Colonial kitchen master Kassandra Vandalay.
Lebreche said she was pleased with the event, especially the turnout from the public and the support of the local restaurant industry.
"They're already talking about doing a second one,” she said.
Len Gillis is a reporter at Sudbury.com.