January 31, 2008 -- By Claire Evans

In the endless doldrums of the grey-wet Portland winter, there is perhaps no other food as uplifting as soup. Endlessly variable, soup eschews all boundaries, adapting its warm, beautifully simple rib-stickingness to porcelain bowls and on-the-go styrofoam containers alike. Although whipping up a crock pot of brothy, simmering veggies at home is surprisingly easy, Portlanders need never to resort to home stewing: appropriately for a town where the heart-warming pick-me-up of a good bowl a soup can never go amiss on a rainy day, Portland is brimming with the liquid gold. From the spicy embrace of mulligatawny, to the lime-tinged zing of a steamy Pho, we've got it all.

Café Voilà
For downtown workers, lunch options are ridiculously abundant: if not the ample, globally-spanning selection of the numerous food cart "pods," then the plentitude of mediocre hole-in-the-wall cafés shilling panini sandwiches and paper-cup coffee. All these, however, lack the glamour that truly befits a Portlander - and they don't serve soup, either. Enter Café Voilà, an adorable downtown joint nestled up against the City Club, whose tiny premises are pretty much always abuzz with frugal epicureans. Their gourmet sandwiches and salads are stellar, but it's the revolving cast of borderline avant-garde soups that keeps people coming back; with fantastic varieties like Curried Sweet Potato, Tomato Lime, Butternut Squash & Pear and Parsnip & Apple, co-owners (and former gourmet caterers, bien sûr) Tamara Kay and Jonathan Goodrow have the upper hand on all other downtown soup-mongerers.

Elephants Delicatessen
Elephant's Deli is an obvious inclusion. Sure, the parking is a nightmare, but as a Portland standby for over 20 years, Elephant's serves up some of the best, most understated soups in town. If you're willing to part with a few bucks more than you might regularly shill out for lunch, the revolving cast of regulars - need I even articulate the wonder of Mama Leone's Chicken Soup, their spin on an old classic, or their Tomato-Orange, a reliably zesty, delicious offering? - absolutely never fails.

Original Halibut's
In the pantheon of soups, the chowder is a heavy-hitter. It's about as hearty as soups get, and so rampantly cloyed with cream that it's hard not to take seriously. Although there are lighter variations (the elegant tomato-based Manhattan Clam Chowder, for example, which is hard to find on this side of the continent), it's the thick New England style - milk-based, full of potatoes and bacon chunks, and served with a smattering of hexagonal oyster crackers - that really brings it home. For the most quintessential chowder in Portland, head to Original Halibut's, a NE Alberta Street stable that's rightly famous for its thick-cut french fries and crunchy, but still moist fried fish. Halibut's chowder is the real deal: Large, tender clams and a button of butter round out its bacon-tinged creaminess.

Loaf & Ladle
Of all the soup joints in Portland, perhaps none is as devoted to its craft as Loaf & Ladle. Unfettered by the distractions of other menu items, this cozy restaurant is totally devoted to its soups (hence the titular "Ladle"), which are all made from scratch and served alongside a wedge of Delfina's pugliese (hence the "Loaf") and a few slices of cheese from a revolving selection. The flavors err on the side of comfort, but their survey of the classics - corn and clam chowders, broccoli cheddar, creamy chicken, and, of course, chili - is generally spot-on. Loaf & Ladle's one indulgence, and what sets it apart from the other soup restaurants in this roundup, is their loving acceptance of the bread bowl. For only a dollar more, you can get your soup served up in a hollowed-out hunk of bread, and that makes all the difference.

My Sister's Soup Company (Closed)
Although soup is perhaps best enjoyed with a big bowl and a small spoon, somewhere cozy (and indoors!), there's definitely no one way to go about it. Take My Sister's Soup, for example: You would never imagine that a food cart wedged on the busy corner of 12th and Hawthorne could serve as a fair locale for soup-enjoyment, what with the variable weather and the persistent car exhaust. Still, an encounter with one of their family recipes, many vegetarian or vegan - the deeply nostalgic chicken noodle, for example, or the borderline magical "Margaret's Mushroom," which pairs a glug of wine with smooth cream and plenty of seasonal 'shrooms - makes the traffic, drizzling rain and asphalt dining room all melt away. You can even pass along the warmth to friends who don't have to leave the house with custom Soup Boxes filled with hot or frozen soup, cookies and soda bread.

Pho Jasmine
There's much to be said for the urbanity of clam chowder, or the silk-soft texture of a bisque, but it's hard for any of the globe's soups to compare to a steaming-hot bowl of Vietnamese Pho, its quasi-mystical broth an amalgam of charred ginger, Saigon cinnamon and slow-simmered beef, chock-full of noodles, lime, coriander leaves and Thai basil. There's plenty of fine Pho establishments in the Rose City, but the jewel in the crown is undoubtedly Pho Jasmine, an unassuming No-Po Vietnamese joint that's been dishing out mind-bending Pho to appreciative soup aficionados for years. Even their veggie Pho, devoid of the traditional complexity of flavors that the meaty broth usually provides, is fantastic: Packed with tons of noodles, vegetables and garlic, and served alongside a veritable smorgasbord of toppings, it packs the same heartwarming punch as Pho Jasmine's beefier offerings.

Zuppa
There are those who believe that soup cannot be made portable. And, although decades of scalding burns and minestrone-destroyed blouses point to the obvious, the clever folks behind Zuppa - a small soup company that delivers their wonderful, seasonally-invented concoctions several times a week to the offices and homes of Portland soup geeks - happily defy this common contention. Thankfully, Zuppa delivers their soups (which run the gamut from Beef and Barley to more innovative versions, like their bodacious Chorizo and Chickpea) cold, which circumvents much of the issue. And, besides, when soup is this good, spilling is just out of the question.