Edina
Winter usually inspires a desire to hunker down, but when really delicious soup is only a short drive away who can resist a quick trip? Here are some suggestions from five Edina restaurants, sure to fit any kind of palate.
For the Big Variety Lunch Stop
Eddington’s Wild Rice Soup
For soup aficionados, it’s tough to beat the selection at Eddington’s. The restaurants feature 25 different soups, 12 each day, from light-and-smooth tomato basil to hearty, chunky chili. In many ways, the selection is a daily popularity contest. According to owner Lewis Bautista, a soup is only kept in the rotation if it sells 100 bowls in a day. And even if it does have the potential to be that successful, Bautista will only sell it if he likes it himself.
But even though some soups—particularly seasonal favorites—might slip in and out of rotation, there's one that has reigned supreme since it was introduced in 1981: wild rice. Bautista created the soup after tasting a version at a local upscale grocery chain. That soup had ham, which he doesn’t like very much, so he replaced it with chicken in his recipe. Customers loved the revamp of a familiar classic, he says.
“Wild rice just has the kind of flavor that people really like in Minnesota,” he says. “Ours tastes like someone's mother's recipe, but the chicken gives it a distinctive touch.”
