What's in the soup?

What's the soup have very kindly put up a post about the Christmas Dinner Soup. I'm a big fan of the line (not written by us) that says "rumored to have some of the finest soup in Scotland."

We'll be putting up recipes from time to time here too so do keep checking back. Meanwhile, read on. Oh, and if your name is Amy (or even if it isn't) follow the link to Theories of Bacon.

Show me the mo-money

Congratulations to The Alibis for raising £600 for Movember. We're proud to have been a sponsor and liked the pumpkin and bacon soup we created for Mogasm so much that it's going to be back at Union on a regular basis.

Bowling for soup

‘Soup, glorious soup!’ trills Louise C after a hearty lunch at Union of Genius. She's ladling out plenty of compliments about this soup café and their 'six flavours, most of which are gluten-free and scrumdiddlyumptious!' Their Caldo Verde is laced with chorizo, potato and kale, and she's positive it will be a popular 'little winter warmer!’

Read more about Edinburgh's soup scene on Yelp here...

You need mo soup

 Movember is coming to its end and razor blade manufacturers are waiting eagerly. As our bit to help out we're providing soups for Mogasm at The Wee Red Bar on Friday November 25th 7pm onward. As well as donating all the takings we're also providing a Soupon for two (the winner and their mo).

We'll be providing two soups, one of which has been created specially for the event: Mogasmic bacon pump. If you want to know what's in it, you'll have to come and try it for yourself.

There's a good line up. Amy'll be swapping her soupmongering gear for drumming duties in The Alibis. Colin Mcleod - as seen on ITV's Penn and Teller will be there. There's a good strong local music line up and plenty of prizes from other Edinburgh businesses too. So come along and show off your mo in all its glory before the shearing season starts.

And if you don't have a mo, come anyway.

That was the week, that was

Well, we had planned to blog a bit more than we have but to say the least, this week has been busier than we expected.

I did get a chance to snap a quick video of us from one evening though to give you a sense of what a soup monger gets up to after a long day's toil in the soup mines.

A bag (with a bag)

This was taken at the end of the first day of Union's trading. It's the contents of the recycling bin we've provided for our customers to return our used takeaway packaging in - from day one, it's worked. I'm so incredibly happy with this. Things got better as the week went on, too - by Wednesday, we had to replace the binbag, and each day since then, I've been stuffing two binbags into our compost collection bin outside.

We're getting our food waste uplifted and composted by the Cyrenians. They'll collect twice per week, and they've made it really easy for us to do. Which is great, as it looks as if this is something which will run and run. And so it should. If a tiny start-up cafe can offer this service, so can anyone.

That's a gauntlet, Starbucks, Costa, Nero and the rest of you. A huge great clanging gauntlet.

Our first regular genius

Our first recycler

Really pleased to say that even on our first day that people were bringing their packaging back so we can recycle it. One marvellous person even brought her own Keep Cup in for us to fill with soup.

If you go to Forrest Road, you will dine (on soup)

Our first press coverage. Never before have so many of us huddled over one copy of the Edinburgh Evening News.

Special thanks to Lucy at Vegware for promoting us so tirelessly and to David at the paper for being interested in an Edinburgh business working with other Edinburgh businesses.

For those wanting to see behind the scenes, check out the album for the press shoot.

Signs and Portents

Today the window graphics and the sign were completed. Suddenly it feels like a cafe. Now when people walk past, they look in to see what's going on. We've even had people walk in to tell us how much they're looking forwards to coming in next week. The photo below was taken by Amy. I love the reflection of the classic old town skyline in it.

The long, dark lunch time of the soul

This is what it feels like to be Scotland's first soupmonger at 3am in the morning when your cafe's due to open in 5 days.

What's in a name?

I suspect that Union of Genius is not the name that immediately springs to mind when you think "soup café." It probably breaks most of the rules for what to name your business. We could have chosen from a million soup based puns. Souper Bowl, Enter the Soup Dragon, What soup doc?, Soups you Sir!, Soupercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Well not that last one as we couldn't have afforded the sign, but you get the idea.

So why Union of Genius? Well the simple answer is we like the name. Elaine likes being called Chief Genius, I like being Mr Genius and we even have a Minor Genius handing out flyers as I type. (I don't know if she noticed the clause in her contract about being called Minor Genius...)

The longer answer is that it represents how we are trying to work. The union is about the way individual components are stronger together. Soup is good. Bread is good. Soup and bread is a union of genius, if you ask us. It's also about trying to find the things we like the most and putting them all in one place. Whether it's brilliant cakes or gourmet marshmallows, the best coffee or tea, it's about putting all the best stuff together. Not everything that's good goes well together, marmite & sticky toffee pudding never work, so the art is finding out what does. That's the genius.

More than that, it's working with suppliers to source local, sustainable ingredients where we can; with packagers to make sure that the packaging we buy is properly degradable; and then encouraging our lovely customers (I do so hope we get customers as it'll get lonely in the shop without them and there's only so much soup I can eat by myself) to either recycle it themselves or bring it back to us to do it. We know that cynics will dismiss this as marketing but keeping stuff out of landfill has been a passion of Elaine's for a long time now. She still volunteers with Edinburgh Freegle to keep goods in use and we're hoping that we'll be able to expand on that in some way through the café next year.

It's also about more than just soup. We're only a small place, we'll only be able to get 7 or 8 people sitting in comfortably but there'll be books to read and a place to cross them. There'll be free wifi so you can tweet while you eat or poke while you dunk and so on. Another of our plans for next year is the "soup group:" just like a book group but for soup.

So the idea is that we're bringing together many different ingredients and, like a good soup, blending them into something that we hope others will find delightful.

And truth about the name? That would be saying; after all truth is a three-edged sword. But we both love a tiny bit of hyperbole from time to time.

Italian Stallion

One is big, red and makes you hurtle around like a maniac. The other's a Ducati ST2.

La Spaziale, the coffee maker that thinks it's a Ducati, is here.

Next step, training from Artisan Roast.

Soup with no gloop

The queen loved soup. She loved soup more than anything in the world except for the Princess Pea and the king. And because the queen loved it, soup was served in the castle for every banquet, every lunch and every dinner.
And what soup it was! Cook’s love and admiration for the queen and her palate moved the broth that she concocted from the level of mere food to a high art. (The Tale of Despereaux p.110)

Let's be clear about something. Elaine loves soup. She loves to cook it, to eat it and to share it with friends. Most of all she loves to feed it to her husband. Since we got married, teeth have been strictly optional for me. Decent gums and a long-handled spoon and I'm good to go.

So when we moved back to Edinburgh 2008 we were both looking forwards to rediscovering the great cafés, watering holes and hang-outs we loved 20 years ago. Most of all, Elaine was looking forwards to soup. Sure enough Edinburgh has great food in abundance. Except for the soup. Go to most cafes and you'll get a soup. Sometimes it'll be great (and we've had some seriously good soups) but usually it'll be cheap, probably served in a styrofoam cup and there'll be a nagging suspicion that it consists of left-overs. As Ottolenghi wrote recently,

Many cooks, including some serious chefs, treat the soup pot as a kind of culinary compost heap into which they chuck whatever happens to be lying around in the hope that it will miraculously be transformed.

Above all else, the magic ingredient that seems to be in 90% of the soups we've met in Edinburgh is gloop.

A sort of squishy, slightly gritty thickening agent made to bulk it out. It makes the kind of tomato soup that, when you look at it, it looks back at you. In a fight, you don't really know which one of you would win.

So we decided that we would make soup. Soup with no gloop. We would treat it as a food to be savoured. After all, soup is not just for a day, it's for life. This means that there would be no artificial thickeners, preservatives, colours or enhancers. No mass-produced concentrates, no cutting the dodgy bits off an old onion and hoping no one notices. No longer would soup be the cheap option on the menu, it would be the star. Our soups will never be padded out with corn starch, flour or suspicious purées. They will be made with vegetables, stock, herbs and spices and cuts of meat. And, of course, love.

Cook smiled “See? She said. “There ain’t a body, be it mouse or man, that ain’t made better by a little soup”  (The Tale of Despereaux p.233)

Full Circle

Full circle is the name we've given to our recycling and loyalty scheme. We've been working hard to make sure the soups we make use ingredients from sustainable and local sources but without paying attention to the packaging we risk becoming part of the problem. 

Part of the answer is the source of the packaging. All our materials come from Vegware; everything you'll get our soup in will compost within 12 weeks. Bowls, lids, carrier bags, even the spoons, they all taste good to the critters in the compost heap.

Thing is, although the packaging is designed to compost, if it ends up in landfill then it won't. Landfill conditions prevent composting. This means we have to take care of the other end too. If you are taking one of our soups home then we hope this shows that a) you have great taste and b) you will stick the packaging in your recycling. If you have a composter then it'll munch the containers quite happily. It's actually rather fun to watch...

Not everyone can do that so we've come up with a cunning plan to persuade you to bring the packaging back to us: free coffee. 

OK, not completely free but what we will do is to give you a stamp on your Regular Genius card. Ten stamps and the next coffee's on us. It rewards you for taking the time to bring the waste back rather than sticking it in the bin. It's not the world's most generous loyalty scheme, we're only just starting after all, but we think it's ingenious. 

There are other ways to get stamps. Bring in your own containers (bowls, cups whatever) and we'll give you a stamp there and then. We will be selling keep cups: fully reusable coffee cups. When you buy one you get a free coffee there and then and each time you use it you'll get a regular genius stamp. 

We'll tweak the scheme as it goes along but the basic idea is to close the circle. Hence the name. "Full circle" also refers to how we ended up here, but that's a story for another day.

Reportage

Very excitingly, I woke up this morning to find in my inbox that we have been recommended by Edinburgh Reporter as one of the five things to know today.Admittedly we came right after reports of a "fowl" smell but nothing's perfect.

Other than that, today has been probably the last day off before the last push starts. The window seat ought to be being made right now which means that Elaine can get busy with the sewing machine and we're testing out some more savoury mufflets on guinea pigs friends tonight. The soup kettles have arrived and Elaine will be off to the suppliers for a bunch of exotic spices.

This time next week the shop fit will be complete (all bar the snagging) and big red will have arrived from Italy ready to brew the first of, hopefully, many fine coffees. After many months of hunting down sites, planning and re-planning menus, trialling recipes and a fair amount of medicinal whisky, Union of Genius is now only days away.

The perfect package

Who would have thought that packaging could be so exciting? Not me but now we have bowls, labels and printed cups. 25 boxes worth, all from our friends at Vegware.

Part of the ethos of Union of Genius is something we call "full circle." We don't want our soup packaging ending up in landfill. For that reason our loyalty scheme is going to be based on bringing the packaging back but to complete the circle we need packaging that is produced sustainably and can be easily composted. That's where vegware comes in.

Even the labels can be composted.

So right now we have 11,000 printed cups and lids with bowls, cutlery, brown paper bags and napkins on the way. And nerves. Plenty of nerves...

Announcing the Union favicon

Here it is. My fab friend Pauline has been busy designing and assembling the Union website. It's odd - because the whole look and feel of Union has been crystallising slowly in my head for a few months now, I'm utterly familiar with what I want and how I want things to look. Pauline, though, builds websites - "out of concepts and thin air", as she memorably put it, which meant she had to create a webspace which looked like the thing that was only in my head. And get it right. She's done a spectacular job, too. She's captured the clarity and space I like on a website.

It's a work-in-progress at the moment - not Pauline's work-in-progress, though - I want to get pictures of the shop on the site, but if I posted images of the scummy slum which the shop is at the moment, all prospective customers would scarper. Right now, the shop is the perfect 'before' picture. All it lacks is an 'after' - but that's on it's way. The shopfit is imminent, and then Union will emerge green, sleek and gorgeous from the filth and grime. More on the shopfit will follow (a lot more...)

And in other news, I went to a vegware party recently, and met a lovely lady who has just moved to Edinburgh from a few years in Hungary. We got talking soups, surprisingly enough, and today she sent me a recipe for guylas, as cooked by the Hungarians. I made it today, as cooked by a Scottish soupmonger:



and that's going straight onto the Union playlist. Although it leaves me with a bit of a dumpling issue. Leave dumplings in the soup too long, and they go soggy. Leave them out for too long, and they go soggy and stodgy. Extensive dumpling research will have to be carried out, until a solution is found. Oh, the slings and arrows...

A serendipitous colour-matchy day, with Opecat

I have been sending off for a ridiculous quantity of fabric samples - I am creating a proper window-seat for folk to sit on, curl up on, look out at the world through big windows from and browse the webs from. But not, sad to say, enjoy the company of cats from - I suspect Environmental Health would have a view on that which differs from the cat cafes of Japan. Anyway, anyone who knows me knows that I do colour-matching. So, having settled on my fabrics - making my own window-seat upholstery, of course - I needed a patterned set of cushions or fabrics to back it up with. So, behind Opus cat, on the floor, there's my set of fabric samples I've settled on.

And today I found the perfect mix of patterned cushions and plain chenille ones. In British Home Stores. Did someone re-engineer that store while I wasn't looking? Because they are ACE. Great fabrics, beautiful colours and amazing prices. Honestly, I'm not on a retainer. But I'll be shopping there again. Isn't it fabulous when a plan comes together? And do I need to mention how brilliantly they match my fabric samples? Maybe not. Maybe I do, considering how well they are hidden behind the moglet's feet. But I do have to say how fabulous their staff were in chasing down a damson-coloured cushion which the Princes Street branch didn't have, but the Cameron Toll branch did. Thanks, ladies, you were the epitome of great customer service.

I am having too much fun. Shhh.

On how the life lived has overtaken the life penned - or, why this blog has effortlessly time-travelled five months.

A shorter and more accurate post title would be 'oh, bugger'.

This was going to be the written account of setting up Scotland's first soup cafe - something which either would, or wouldn't, happen, depending on the vagaries of fate, life and cashflow. After walking away from the opportunity of a lifetime to create a shop from an empty shell in a disused basement in an unloved corner of Edinburgh, I went into a slow but noticeable decline, which ended up with me applying for jobs as I was sure, very sure, that I simply wasn't going to find my perfect-sized property in my perfect location at a rent I could afford to pay.

And then suddenly I did.

Until the lease is signed, the location is a secret, but the lease will be signed in the next few days. The rent is under my budget. The property enjoys a rateable value lower than the business rates limit. It's the right size. There's a big kitchen in there already. It has big windows, and a really good feel about it. The landlord is lovely, supportive, businesslike and fair. And all of this is going to be turned into Union.

The last few months have been a round of websites (discovering your oldest pal is now a website designer is very useful), catering suppliers (the house is now full of not-perfect bowls and cutlery I didn't like after all), cake suppliers, print suppliers, composting companies, enormously expensive coffee machine companies and art companies and now, after a ten year gap, I am painting blackboards again, but this time for my own shop. The till arrived today, and if anything can make this whole enterprise seem terrifyingly real, it's the arrival of a brand-new till, complete with it's own thousand-page manual. Unbounded joy. Actually, it will be, once I learn how to work it.

I am having a lot of fun and a lot of fear, but the fun is most definitely winning. I will post a pic of the blackboard once I remember where I put it. The picture. It's quite hard to lose an A1 blackboard.

...that was March, then

..and nary a blog post. It was a busy month, though, largely spent in a disused basement in Edinburgh's South Side. That, and having sleepless nights fretting. The Geek spotted an empty shop in the perfect location. Thanks to the wonders of the intertubes, the owner of the site was found and located in double-quick time. The shop, it turned out, was already let. The empty basement, however, wasn't. And thus passed March, in a welter of basement visits, talking to surveyors, architects, contractors, before deciding that, perfect location or not, it was just too risky and potentially costly to take it on.

March also saw the end of the soup trials - here's the last week's one, which was sweetfire beetroot with ginger. Delish. And most of the triallists agreed. Which was good.



So, here we are in April, and Union is still a virtual soup cafe.

Thanks to one of those entertainingly random conversations, the suggestion of the Edinburgh Farmers Market was made. One of those weird light-bulb moments because it quite simply hadn't occurred to me to try that route. It's not going to be a source of income - it'll cover costs, is all - but it will be a launch for the business itself and may hopefully lead to more work. And it looks as if it's all going ahead - the Market are keen; so am I; I have all my costs worked out and just have to secure a commercial kitchen. Which, with a fair following wind, I will hopefully have by this time tomorrow.

That same random conversation also suggested savoury muffins. So that was today's session, along with All-Day Breakfast Soup (take 2) - miles better than version 1.0. Savoury muffins. Here's what's left after I had a good tasting:



Mini-muffins with goat's cheese, olives, tomato and red onion. It's a shame it's not a tasting blog, really, as these are pretty good. Immodest but truthful.

So, there's a quick catch-up. Looks like Genius at the Market is about to take flight.

The Panini Scale

It's always astonishing when you realise that someone knows you better than you know yourself. Last night, I had the perfect demonstration of that, courtesy of The Geek.

I have been swithering, to use a great Scots term, about Union being a pure soup cafe - soup, salad, gorgeous breads and nothing else. The menu streamlined; the cafe specialising in soups; the numbers of soups on offer increasing as time goes on. Rather like Ali Yeganeh's Soup Man in New York - we do soup. If you don't want soup, don't come in here. I like that attitude; that robust confidence to stand by your original idea.

However, the thought of turning away sandwich-seeking customers makes me twitch a bit. As I get more nervous about this, I start to widen the menu options to include sandwiches, even though I don't want Union to be yet another Edinburgh sandwich shop. Then I fret that I'm wandering away from the original idea, and then the frets grow.

The Geek knew of these switherings before I was properly aware of them, and now I realise that I swing from being totally confident in the soup-only business model to panicking about it. Thus my confidence (or lack of) can be plotted on the Panini Scale:




In other news, I may be embarking on a renaming exercise for some of my soups. The soup trialists got cream of courgette and spinach this week. Something about this made me ask them if they'd choose this soup from a cafe menu. Almost all of them said 'no' - but they all loved the taste. One of the triallists said I should call the soup 'The Big Green', as the spinach-and-courgette name sounded depressingly healthy. I like that. Not sure what made me ask them that question - must have been irking away in the back of my mind as well. It has, though, reinforced the idea of letting customers have a taste before they buy. That then led me to the 'semi Genius' and 'full Genius' - a lunch serving of multiple smaller portions of soup. 'Full Genius' is all six. Semi ... well, guess.

And I tried a new bakery this week; Bakery Andante in Morningside. Which has left me with a rather annoying earworm.

a three-soup day

Soup trials are going well. I'm experimenting on the folks in The Geek's workplace. I started meekly, with a minestrone followed by cream of mushroom (ha! but this cream of mushroom tastes like a forest floor)(in a good way), but this week's offering is a little more outre: sweetcorn, chipotle chile and lime, from Yotam Ottolenghi, via my tinkerings. It's utterly gorgeous. Though it's rather immodest to say so, but maybe not, as it's not my invention. Though I have tinkered. At a course last week, we were told that the Brits, and Scots in particular, are terribly bad at self-promotion. I had my brand-new business cards in my bag, announcing the launch of Union of Genius to the world. "Have a large, self-promoting gauntlet", I said, as I handed a card to the tutor. And then tiptoed off.

So, today I've cooked up a lot of soup, but by daily cafe standards, it's a mere bagatelle. I have, however, picked up the Geek's challenge: to make a breakfast soup. I thought what I like for breakfast when I'm away, and hungry, and in need of a comfort-food splurge - bacon, sausage, egg, hash browns, tomato. I've taken the essence of that -



- and turned it into soup. What I have is a potato and sausage base, with crispy bacon, pepadew peppers and tomato topping, and an egg flower on top of the topping. As a first attempt, I rather like it. I wonder if it'll catch on? Here it is:



It wasn't bad, actually. The soup base was rich and savoury and the general consensus was that the soup needed some bits of sausage in it, as well as the bacon. The egg flower, though, was a definite hit.

In other news, I've been looking at premises, and nothing seems quite right for any number of different reasons. It's early days. I started looking at property with the thought that by starting early, I'd have lots of time to find a good spot. Unfortunately, my forward-planning brain has interpreted my failure to find the perfect place in three weeks as an impending sign of certain doom. Someone, please tell my critical faculties to go put their feet up for a little while, eh?

Minimise time in the danger zone

I've been busy. Busy eating, mostly, since it's been Christmas and New Year since I last updated, but busy cooking up plans as well. And cooking up soup. Which is fortunate. I'm scaling up my own recipes and costing them out; the Geek has recruited some human volunteers to field-test my recipes and packaging in return for some honestly-completed questionnaires; I've found two potential artisan bread suppliers and I've passed the REHIS Food Handling and Hygiene certificate. I now know things about bacterial growth I'd really rather not, but have stuck memorably anyway, and I have this useful and handy chart. All food must minimise time in the danger zone:



I also now know exactly what Environmental Health will do to me if I allow so much as a smidgeon of smudge to besmirch my immaculate kitchen. That stuck memorably, too.

Business Gateway have been amazingly helpful. I've signed up for many of their courses, and today I met with one of their business advisers who gave me a wealth of information, just when I needed it. Just fabulous.

And also today, I went properly looking for premises for the first time. This is feeling very real, and after thinking through the advice I was given, completely achievable. I also feel, if I'm honest, properly confident for the first time since I bounded out of the front doors of my former employer, still-wet cheque in hand.

Which is a good thing, as last week I fluffed a recipe for the first time. Beetroot, ginger and lime soup with wasabi cream was what I'd planned. In my mind it was earthy and sweetly tangy, with a lovely little kick from the wasabi, which would then be cooled down by the cream. It was, instead, vile. Thin and sharp, not earthy at all, and not even tamarind could put this baby right. I blame the beetroot, personally, for being too big and watery, but the real disaster was the wasabi cream. Those ingredients don't marry; they divorce with instant effect. It was amazingly awful. Spectacularly bad. I'll try again; I'll roast the damned beetroot first next time and leave the wasabi powder on the shelf. In true Alanis style, however, I chose beetroot soup to illustrate my new temporary business cards:



Because she'd approve of the irony.*


*if my life has taught me one thing, it's that Alanis IS God, and you don't mess with her. Don't even THINK anything less than pixie dust and angel milk about her. Her memory is long and her reach infinite.