I Was Shocked This Place Has the SouthCoast's Best Kale Soup

I found the most amazing kale soup I’d ever tasted today in the most unlikely of spots.

Needing a quick lunch and looking for a warm-up, I thought some nice, hot soup was in order. Normally, I keep a few cans of Chunky soup in my office for just such an occasion, but it just so happened that I have yet to restock.

That’s when I wandered into a place in Fairhaven where I never expected to find the best kale soup ever.

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The Best Kale Soup on the SouthCoast Is From a Grocery Store

The Stop & Shop in Fairhaven usually has a couple of different soup options available during the day. Lately, the store had been on a run serving up chili – which isn’t the ideal thing to eat in the middle of the work day, if you catch my drift – but is also known to have some clam chowder and chicken noodle soup in the rotation as well.

There are three tureens in the hot food section, and one was filled with macaroni and cheese, which was just too many carbs for me to have as my midday meal. The other was a Buffalo chicken noodle, which while it definitely would have warmed things up, it smelled a little spicier than I wanted to deal with at lunchtime.

The middle tureen was kale soup, and that seemed like it would hit the spot.

Kale Soup Is a SouthCoast Staple

Every restaurant, every home chef and every vovó (or, more accurately, avó) on the SouthCoast has what they think is the best kale soup around. It’s hard to believe anyone in the greater New Bedford or Fall River area has never had kale soup, but just in case you haven’t, it’s a relatively simple recipe: potatoes, some type of meat (usually linguica or chourico), options such as carrots, onions and kidney beans, and of course plenty of leafy green kale.

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However, every batch of kale soup has the potential to taste different based on the seasonings and ingredients added beyond those basic parts. It’s where you take it beyond the basics that can make the soup.

Why Stop & Shop’s Kale Soup Is So Good

First, it helps that you’re scooping it yourself, because you can make sure you get the right solids-to-stock ratio; nobody likes a soup that’s nothing but broth, but you also don’t want just a lump of wet food in a bowl, either.

Even though the tureen of soup was pretty empty by the time I hit it up at noontime, there were still plenty of solids in the soup and it made for the perfect balance in my takeout container.

Everything in the soup was perfectly cooked. The potatoes were soft, the linguica wasn’t overdone and the kale wasn’t too soggy. The broth had just the right amount of kick, enough of a zing without it becoming overpowering.

So Where Does Stop & Shop Get Its Kale Soup?

This soup was so good, I just assumed it was homemade. I envisioned someone in the back kitchen of Stop & Shop expertly chopping vegetables, dicing linguica and stirring in beans. Who was this secret chef? We need to give them their flowers.

I called over and spoke to someone in the deli to find out more about the soup’s origins. What they told me was both surprising and not surprising all at the same time.

Stop & Shop actually gets their soups, including the kale, from Blount Fine Foods in Fall River.

Now, I’ve been a big fan of every Blount soup and chowder I’ve ever tasted, but in all my years in the food service industry, I never tried their kale soup. It was always something the chefs I worked with made on their own, from their own recipe. Turns out, I was missing out on what just might be the best around for all those years.

Looks like I’m heading to Fall River to pick up a few bags.

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Gallery Credit: Rob Carroll