Bowled over

Ming's Steamboat restaurant in Morphett St, city. Picture: CAMPBELL BRODIE Source: The Advertiser

You've got to love a good broth. Made from the ground up, chicken soup in all its guises can cure the winter blues.

Add matzo balls and it might as well be called Jewish penicillin. Throw in pasta, noodles or rice and just change the national flag attached.

That's the joy of soups. They are a part of every ethnic cuisine and celebrate the frugal end of the menu to boot.

It's a tribute to Adelaide's multicultural restaurant and cafe scene that you can eat your way around the world via its many bowls of broth. You can spoon your way from England to Japan and beyond with stopovers in France, Italy, Germany and Russia on your European leg, then hop to several South-East Asian countries - Vietnam, China and Japan.

And that's just for starters.

As a launching pad, let's begin with ye olde British pea and ham. Pea soup also is the base for our own state soup emblem, the pie floater, though it's an endangered species these days with the passing of the city's caravans.

Prices Fresh bakeries remain a stronghold, though, especially the two drive-through outlets at Hillcrest and Allenby Gardens (463-465 North East Rd and 544-546 Port Rd).

The pea and ham soup ($5.90) here is made on the premises and carefully chunky, with thick, earthy dried pea colour rather than bright green. Mildly flavoured, it's soothing and filling, as the style should be.

To clone this English classic into a South Australian special, add an upside-down pie and splash it with zigzags of tomato sauce - you can choose a dozen different Prices versions of your pie, and watch it slowly sog and disintegrate, the meat adding body while the sweet-sour sauce adds a spike to the richness.

From the European continent, French onion soup is an essential Gallic statement and arguably one of the world's great winter warmers, traditionally topped by sliced bread topped with cheese all grilled to melting and bubbling. Every French chef worth their hat will have a distinctive onion meter in terms of potency, and at Burnside Village's Bistro France (phone 8379 0377), a small cafe bistro offshoot from former city stalwart La Guillotine, it is to the mild side.

Given the popularity of the place among Burnside's matriarchs, this isn't surprising. It's almost like supping on a bowl of brown onion gravy - damned warming though when taken with a glass of red.

Minestrone is Italy's calling card on this tour, and can be a vegetarian's great default setting on a winter's day.

Small dice of whatever the kitchen has going, souped up with tiny pasta best when still in shape, and white beans in a broth that ties all the parts together, sprinkled with fresh parmesan, it's a smart Italian lunch when time and budget are limited.

Nano Ready 2 Go in the East End's Ebenezer Place (phone 8227 0468) often has a beaut batch on its menu board and they don't hold back, even at $6.50 a serve with roll. Plenty of beans, half mushrooms, spinach and ground vegetables, it's one for mild-food fans as well.

Moving to middle Europe, Germany and many of its eastern neighbours revere goulash soup, and at home this often is served the day after the original goulash, thinned out to feed the family one more time.

At The German Cake Shop, 2 Pine Ave, Hahndorf (phone 8388 7086), which does a brisk trade in rye breads, wursts, sauerkraut, bienenstich and cakes, the goulash has been made from the same recipe for 20 years.

It's a spicy, dark red version thick with onion, capsicum and redolent of hot paprika that's all front-end spice without, however, over-debilitating long-term burnout. Rich and satisfying with a few thick slices of the store's own rye, it is quite distinctive, and again reinforcing on a cold day.

Heading farther north, Russia's contribution is based on the humble beetroot.

Often found in new-age cafes scarily bright crimson and thick as quicksand, its more traditional stance is truer to its rustic origins, such as Babushka's borscht ($6.50) at Eurasian specialty shop Taldy-Kurgan, Shop 3, Central Market (phone 0434 082 079.

Here, it is more a beetroot broth with shredded cabbage and cut potato, and you can turbocharge the bowl with the addition of potato or beef dumplings ($9.50).

It's time to leave the European continent now and head to South-East Asia, where one of Adelaide's great foodie debates originates.

Laksa is arguably Adelaide's most popular soup, and Chinatown is thick with it, from food courts through to the specialist Malaysian and Singaporean restaurants.

The joy of laksa for many is its rich, coconut-milk-based soup and wild Malaysian spice flavours, the art of the best being to find the balancing point between thick and thin, mild and hot. Add just about any protein combination you fancy, with the quality of traditional tofu and slices of fish ball being critical, and you have a big meal in a bowl.

One of the precinct's budget favourites is at The Laksa House in the Market Plaza Food Court off Moonta St, and also now with an offshoot at 45 Flinders St.

Other faves are The Asian Gourmet and Chinatown Cafe.

Thailand's great soup, tom yum, also makes for a great lunchtime filler and it's another classic case of being only as good as its ingredients. 

Best made fresh, it's a hot, sour soup that sings with the aromatic power of lemon grass, kaffir lime, ginger, lime juice and fish sauce and varying degrees of red chilli. Another style, tom kha, contains coconut milk and is slightly thinner than laksa. 

These and many other ingredients are also ground and fried in oil to a tom yum paste, the base for most budget versions of the soup in food courts, selling from $7 to $9 depending on the addition of chicken, seafood or combinations. In Gouger St's upmarket Nu restaurant, bowls of both soups sell for $14 entree and $26 main - and you get what you pay for.

Gaining traction in the Asian soup battle is Vietnam's pho, a legend in its own lunchtime at places such as Moonta and Grote St corner store Charlie's Shack, while closer to Adelaide University's North Tce campus, hordes of Vietnamese students flock to Zen Kitchen, Shop 7, Renaissance Arcade (phone 8232 3542).

The beef noodle pho in North Vietnam style reaches its zenith here in the deluxe combination pho dac biet, with fillet steak, beef brisket, tripe and slices of beef balls turning Zen's rice noodle beef broth into a major event.

It's a hyper bowl redolent with sweet spicing and crumbled black pepper, hugely warming without being too heavy, and healthy to boot with a plate of bean sprouts and fresh Asian mint to add if you want.

If the tripe scares you, go the standard version from $7.90 for a small bowl, while a dollar more provides a massive serve. Try too the hoanh thanh (wonton noodle soup) if you fancy egg noodles and homemade pork wontons with barbecue pork also in for the ride. The broth is milder, but you can add a tasty chilli sauce to spruce it up.

Steamboat is the soup world's great entertainer. Essentially a hotpot simmering away at your table into which diners dip thinly sliced meats, seafood, vegetables and noodles, this is an eastern Asia experience, with Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese cuisines all working the core style into their own cultural flavour.

Ming's Steamboat, 301-303 Morphett St, city (phone 8410 0188), offers eight stock bases from around the $8-$13 mark, to which you add your choice of paper-thin dipping produce including wontons and dumplings, great house-made fish and prawn balls and terrific sticky rice cakes. Six bowls of dipping sauces are offered.

For a peak treat, choose a Yin Yang shaped stockpot with fiery chilli soup on one side and a Chinese herbal broth the other. Call the fire brigade for the former. As well as Japan's take on hotpot, its noodle soup, or ramen, is a major attraction for those seeking total meals in a bowl.

Thickish white noodles, almost chewy in texture, swim in bowls of a pork broth ($8.50-$18-50) at Ajisen Ramen, 23 Leigh St, city (phone 8338 3992), and then Japan's unique miso, curry and spice flavours can be added, though be careful in the heat department because spicy styles are renowned to be hot, hot, hot.

That's the first 10 bowls in a world tour.

Now for Korean - Gouger St's Mapo restaurant has just added a few traditional soups to its mid-year menu. And Greek - also in Gouger St, the Greek Meze restaurant is serving youvarlakia, a chicken and lemon broth with rice and meatballs.

Around the corner in Morphett St, British India is bowling up mulligatawny. And there's an Ethiopian version down on Port Rd. And an American crab bisque. And a Spanish gazpacho, and, and, and . . .