Wander into The Soup House and you may well think you are in Riverwest or Bay View. The heavily tatted and stocking-capped Dan Warschkow is behind the counter ladling soup out of tall pots into bowls. He's a visual artist and his paintings hang in the restaurant.
The dining room is a homey and funky mix of potted plants, mismatched furniture and collected curiosities. An out of tune and seldom played piano is against one wall. A pool table that is used is at the other end of the room.
Couches, coffee tables and a long church pew complement an assortment of dining tables and chairs. A semi-regular customer chooses to sit cross legged on the floor at a coffee table while eating her lunch. It's not all that unusual for someone to take a post-lunch snooze.
Want to leave a tip for the hustling staff? You can drop it through a knothole in the wood counter.
This surely sounds like a neighborhood bistro, and it is, but the 'hood may surprise you. It is downtown, in the historic McGeoch Building on the corner of Michigan and Milwaukee Streets. Although it is on the ground floor, The Soup House has such a low profile in the stately neoclassical building, it is easily overlooked.
The line that often snakes around the small lobby during the lunch hour confirms that plenty of people -- downtown office workers, city laborers who pull up outside in their yellow trucks -- have found the restaurant. Many of them never stop in the dining room, choosing to get their soup to go.
They buy the standards -- creamy mushroom, cheese broccoli, potato leek -- but The Soup House's signature is its imaginative flair for creating the unusual and exotic. For example, buffalo chicken is the most popular offering since it was introduced earlier this year. Its ingredients include parmesan, mozzarella and blue cheese as well as chicken.
"Think of buffalo chicken wings minus the bones," Warschkow says.
The Soup House, which is open Monday through Friday, has a rotating menu of five different offerings each day along with one constant, a basic chicken soup made of chicken, carrots, celery, garlic, olive oil "and love," says owner Ruby Erickson. The buffalo chicken became so popular it is guaranteed a weekly spot on the menu, on Tuesdays.
Mexican tortilla soup and a "Count of Monte Cristo" concoction made with a creamy smoky base, Swiss cheese, turkey, ham and croutons are also high on the Soup House hit parade. The latter is modeled on a Monte Cristo sandwich. Ivan's Tika Masala, named after the former employee who created it, is more of an Indian stew, and like several of the restaurant's specialties it is served over jasmine rice.
Other ethnic offerings include Jamaican chicken stew and Senegalese peanut soup. Some menu items such as corn chowder and split pea soup are vegan but customers can respectively add shrimp or ham at no extra cost.
Cold soups appear on the menu in the summer.
Two chilis are pizza themed. The pepperoni pizza chili is self-explanatory. The supreme pizza chili includes ground beef and Italian sausage as well as pepperoni. Both chilis have Italian seasoning and are topped with mozzarella cheese.
Dan went to work for her, and when they needed help, he called his old Cudahy High School pal Erickson, asking if she wanted to work a few hours a week. That grew into a full time job, and last April Erickson bought the business.
She and Dan are assisted by a part time employe who is also an old friend. They keep the restaurant loose and informal, but move customers through the counter service-only establishment with assembly-line speed. "The Soup House" is open from 9 to 2, with the bulk of the traffic coming during a 90-minute lunch crunch between 11:30 and 1.
Warschkow says they have served as many as 200 people during that time period. Do the math and you get an idea of the operation's efficiency.
"We like to go like maniacs, go really fast," Erickson says with a characteristic grin. "It's like performing onstage," Warschkow adds.
The recipes for the old soup standards come from original owner Renee Warschkow. Dan grew up on them. The new soups and stews are often the product of sudden inspiration.
Dan estimates The Soup House has offered about 200 different creations that can be served in a bowl over its 10- year history. Some make only seldom appearances on the menu, and not all of them have written recipes.
"We take dishes and turn them into soup. We're not afraid to do stuff," Erickson says.
The most unpopular concoction was beanie weenie soup. The baked beans and hot dog bits creation was offered only once because of dismal sales. Erickson's penchant for eating beanie weenies out of a can was the catalyst for the unsuccessful experiment.
Soups are sold in eight, 12 and 16-ounce sizes for $5, $6 and $7. Sales tax is included in the price to reduce the amount of time needed to give change. Each order receives a large hunk of French bread.
Erickson started baking corn bread to accompany the Jamaican chicken stew, and customers ordering other items began requesting it in lieu of the French bread. Because of that, she often offers it as an alternative on days when the Jamaican stew is not on the menu. "The corn bread baking is out of control," she reports with another grin.
A variety of cold sandwiches are available for non-soup eaters, and the restaurant sells a different hot sandwich each Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Nachos are a specialty on Friday.
Cookies, brownies, apple pie and occasionally Erickson's mother's pumpkin pie are for dessert.
While food quality is obviously important to the success of any restaurant, the upbeat hip vibe at The Soup House is an important ingredient in its appeal to a downtown workforce. The antithesis of the Soup Nazi, Erickson revels in knowing the first names of many of her customers.
"We have a community here," she says, "and I worry about pleasing the people who come through our door everyday. A lot of people think of us as the kids down the street who make stuff to eat. Actually, we are adults -- she is 30 and Warschkow is 32 -- and we own the place."
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
