Where to eat your soup and your soup bowl:

It's National Soup Month! We eat more soup in January than any other month, and it's not hard to figure out why, when the wind chill drops and everyone has some kind of upper-respiratory infection.

        A couple of years ago, the rise of the bakery-cafe introduced a fad for soup served in bread bowls. There's something nifty about being able to eat the dish your food is served in.

        I think a sourdough French-style loaf is the best bread for holding soup. Inside, the bread gets soft and soaked with soup, so you can spoon them up with the liquid, but the crust is tough enough to act as a dish. And there's still some bread left that you can butter and eat.

        Panera Bread has awfully good sourdough, and they use the small loaves to serve at least four kinds of soup every day ($4.39), always including French onion, broccoli cheddar and chicken noodle. Panera locations are proliferating. One recently opened in Hyde Park Plaza, another opens in Western Hills today (Glenway Crossing), joining locations in Harper's Point (Symmes Township), Fairfield, Woodlawn, Anderson Township and two in Kenwood. Shops are coming to Crescent Springs and Colerain Township.

        Big Sky Bread Co. in Oakley, Clifton, Blue Ash and Fort Mitchell, serves four soups every day (always including tomato bisque) in its small sourdough loaf ($4.25). The soups are all vegetarian.

        In Covington, tiny Wildflour Bakery bakes round whole-wheat loaves and fills them with earthy, homemade soups ($3). I had a chorizo and kale soup there that must have satisfied several categories of food that's good for you. Look carefully for Wildflour, it's in an old house, just north of Scalea's on Greenup Street.

        Atlanta Bread Co., downtown and Woodlawn, uses a sourdough loaf, but it's too sour. The mushroom-barley soup ($3.85) I had was overwhelmed with salt and sage.

        Grote Cafe (downtown in Tower Place, Fort Thomas and White Oak) has a variation on the bread bowl. Rather than a whole loaf, hollowed out, its flat bread is shaped into a bowl. Grote also serves salad this way. It holds chili ($4.25) pretty well; I'm not sure I'd trust it with chicken soup. Once you're done eating the chili, the bread isn't all that delicious on its own.
        Contact Polly Campbell by phone: 768-8376; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: pcampbell@enquirer.com.

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