Good Soup Coming To Southwest Side
Takeout only spot on 92nd and Oklahoma would offer small-batch soups, sandwiches and house-made sourdough.
Sign at the site of the future Good Soup restaurant. Photo courtesy of Samantha Zielinski.
Samantha Zielinski believes that every successful chef needs a specialty— some make their grandmother’s pierogis, others spend years perfecting roast chicken.
“Everybody has a story like that,” she says.
Aptly named Good Soup, Zielinski would open the takeout only restaurant with co-owner Travis Reynolds in the West View neighborhood, 3135 S. 92nd St.
“You could make anything into a soup and it can be good,” Zielinski says. “You just have to know how to do it right.”
In such a straightforward dish, quality ingredients are key. The restaurant plans to source local and seasonal ingredients through partnerships with Yuppie Hill Poultry and Heritage Farms. Zielinski also plans to serve house-made sourdough bread.
Clam chowder and French onion soup will be part of a rotating lineup of soups featured at the restaurant. The menu will also include sandwiches. The Marinated Portabella is a standout, featuring whipped goat cheese, micro basil, beefsteak tomato, pickled shallot and lettuce on a french baguette. The B, L, FGT includes fried green tomato, peppered bacon, lettuce and cajun aioli on a french baguette.
Zielinski has been cooking since she graduated high school, but notes she has been reluctant to take risks in her career. “I worked at a couple of nicer restaurants. And they always had higher hopes for me.”
This past year Zielinski decided to crack into her retirement fund and set out to open a food truck. While searching for a base kitchen, the empty space near the corner of 92nd and Oklahoma Street fell into her lap, she said. The kitchen is located in a strip mall-style building that also contains a George Webb Restaurant and a CBD store, Hazy Dayz. Aside from a kitchen, the space has a front lobby area, so the landlord suggested a takeout space, Zielinski said. Just like that, Good Soup had its first brick-and-mortar.
For now, the food truck is on the back burner, likely until spring.
Good Soup will open in what was formerly Hawg City Sausage Haus, and before that, Paulee’s Barbacoa.
Zielinski and Reynolds updated the countertops, added signage and renovated the front lobby of the 1,600-square-foot space.
Its planned hours are Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. and Sunday through Monday from 11 a.m. until midnight. Zielinski said she chose to include late-night hours to cater to the bar crowd as well as night-shift healthcare workers.
“They shouldn’t have to be stuck cooking at home,” she says. “They probably have some of the hardest jobs.”
“There’s always McDonald’s and Taco Bell,” she adds. But after 10 p.m., “there’s not a lot of places to get good food around here.”
Good Soup will be open for counter ordering and delivery through apps like Grubhub. The restaurant shares 10 onsite parking spaces with the two other businesses in the building.
The restaurant is hiring. Interested parties can reach out to Good Soup via instagram.
