When Souplantation closed all 97 of its eating places in 2020, citing well being considerations round self-serve eating, seemingly all of Southern California grieved. The San Diego-based buffet chain, which was also called Candy Tomatoes in different states, had already filed for chapter in 2016, however the early pandemic was the corporate’s true dying knell. Fashionable with immigrant households (together with my very own), hungry college students and seniors on restricted incomes, the restaurant was identified for its inexpensive, barely mediocre mixture of salads, soups, pastas and baked items. There have been additionally a number of desserts like soft-serve and, if my reminiscence serves me accurately, the occasional molten chocolate sheet cake or seasonal fruit cobbler with which one might create your personal dessert à la mode.
As of February 28, a 3rd social gathering within the Inland Empire has resurrected certainly one of Souplantation’s former areas beneath the identify Soup ’n Contemporary. It’s not the primary time somebody has tried to revive the buffet-style soup-and-salad idea, nevertheless it’s the one one to have opened to this point. Situated about 45 minutes away with no site visitors (and greater than double that in rush hour) from Downtown L.A. within the metropolis of Rancho Cucamonga, the equally named restaurant makes use of a barely totally different coloration scheme however has all-but-identical menu choices and pricing. To see how the brand new dupe stacks as much as the unique, we despatched our freelance video contributor Richard Tranley on Sunday, March 17 to evaluation Soup ’n Contemporary after which known as him up for a play-by-play recap this week.
“I positively suppose the very best ingredient they’ve is nostalgia,” Richard says. He wasn’t bought on coming again, however if you happen to have been a Souplantation superfan, don’t thoughts commuting to the Inland Empire and are keen to attend to get inside, he would say it’s value a attempt. At $16.99 for lunch and $18.99 for dinner (plus reductions for academics and veterans), you gained’t be spending a lot cash if you happen to’re planning on taking a day journey to go to, although you’ll make investments loads of time.
In keeping with Richard, the meals was good and precisely as marketed. “All the pieces was contemporary, every thing was crispy, nothing was gross. Nevertheless it was simply salad.” Wait instances are doubtless longer than what could change into regular as a result of restaurant’s relative newness, however it is best to count on to attend anyplace from 45 minutes to 2 hours, he added. Having pushed to Rancho Cucamonga together with his accomplice, Richard arrived at 1:30pm, and based on the timestamp from video footage he shot on his telephone, he was in a position to enter at 2:41pm, bringing his whole wait time to an hour and 11 minutes.
As soon as inside, the structure was just about unchanged from Souplantation’s glory days. Richard and his accomplice have been in a position to construct their very own salads and sampled all of Soup ’n Contemporary’s ready salads. Amongst them, he notably loved the Americanized Chinese language hen salad, which was referred to as Wonton Happiness at Souplantation. Now merely simply known as Asian hen salad, the salad presents the identical crunchy, deep-fried chow mein. At Soup ’n Contemporary, it’s supplied on the facet, more likely to protect the topping’s crunch issue.
The day he visited, the restaurant had three soups and three pastas on supply: corn chowder, clam chowder and hen noodle soup plus spaghetti alfredo, macaroni and cheese and a traditional spaghetti marinara. The entire dishes have been just about the identical high quality because the OG, besides the clam chowder. “The clam chowder was slightly runnier,” Richard added. “That was in all probability the one factor that was totally different.”
The small baked items choice included chocolate and blueberry muffins, pizza squares and cornbread. He misses the previous blueberry muffin’s crunchy crust, nevertheless, although he did discover the chocolate muffins to be “fairly good.” Like many people as soon as as soon as upon a time, Richard took benefit of having the ability to combine and match choices, topping his second bowl of corn chowder with cornbread to modify issues up slightly. If he needed to be sincere, nevertheless, all the expertise was simply high-quality. “I saved ready for the appetizers to cease. My mind was like, ‘When do the mains come?’” (I ought to add right here that although Richard grew up consuming at Souplantation, he additionally moonlights as an expert chef, with the anticipated refined style in meals such a facet hustle requires.)
All in all, Richard discovered the meals at Soup ‘n Contemporary to be usually spot on. “The shortage of salt was spot on,” he added, reflecting again on his recollections of spooning up bowls of the chain’s well-known hen noodle soup. “When you add the correct amount of salt, it’s a superb, traditional American hen noodle soup, which is itself tailored from French mirepoix. Identical thick noodles.”
Soup ‘n Contemporary is positioned at 8966 Foothill Boulevard in Rancho Cucamonga. It’s open Monday to Thursday from 11am to eight:30pm, Friday and Saturday from 11am to 9:30pm and Sunday 11am to eight:30pm.
