Sasha Elenko, Co-Content Editor
You can learn a lot about a secret soup society by reading their emails.
For example, you can discover just what type of conversation would take place while intimately slurping soup with 16 strangers.
“At each meeting we will discuss the merits of a small starter, debate a big bowl of Meat & Noodle soup and argue over the dessert,” the introductory email stated.
Or, you can learn how to find the place.
“Due to the private nature of the club, no other location details will be given until the Saturday before your meeting.”
Or not …
If you read until the very end, you might catch their motto: “Raise Meat. Roll Noodles. Make Soup. Eat.” The Four Noble Truths.
The name of the club is Meat and Noodles, and yes, if you didn’t catch that, I’m not allowed to say where it is. But here’s a hint: judging by the utterly divine taste of the chef’s three choice dishes, it’s probably not located in any earthly realm.
My supernatural experience began with a long, winding driveway. At its end, I was greeted by the host, server, owner and chef, Lauren Garaventa. As she led me inside, I was immediately enveloped in a three-layer dip of hypnotic warmth, ginger-lemon-beet spritzer and ‘90s rap music — okay, you had to be there in order to understand.
After spending an unquantifiable amount of time talking with people who I didn’t fully know, but probably have met many times (you know Vashon), I was ready to lay down on the table and wait for the angel Gabriel to come give me a back massage.
Then Lauren began to introduce the three courses.
First up was the spring salad. Rather than usual greens, the salad was inverted, with a thin layer of baby spinach resting on top of an endearing heap of pickled golden beets, carrots and aged daikon. The shiitake mushrooms lining the perimeter — while adorably tiny — carried enough juice to put out a fire.
After the perfect amount of time — not long enough to make it awkward, but not brief enough to feel rushed — Lauren collected our plates and brought out the masterpiece, the magnum opus, the pièce de résistance.
The Meat and Noodle Soup.
Intermingling with the rapport of lifelong friends — in what must have been a half-gallon of sweet and sour pork broth — were rubine brussels sprouts, more carrots and parsnips, and quartered lengthwise, beef brisket and homemade egg noodles. Floating just beneath a bird’s nest of microgreens was the marinated egg, with its golden yolk barely runny.
It didn’t take more than a spoonful before I lost all coherence of thought. It felt as though I had fallen into an endless pit of memory foam.
That was when the dessert arrived.
The pear mochi cake, made with buckwheat flour, was nice — exquisite even. But the true star of the show was the garnish. Dramatically posing atop a teaspoon-sized kiss of whipped cream was a stoic sliver of candied orange peel. Surrounding the whipped cream like a moat around a castle was a citrus-spice syrup.
When the honey-colored elixir, topped with golden flakes of nutmeg, first tickled my soul, the 90s rap music, which had sustained the torpor en masse all afternoon, gave way to Chopin’s “Nocturne in E-flat major,” easing me into heaven — where I remained until the following Monday.
As I turned my back on this clandestine soupery for the last time, I began to wonder if it had all been a dream.
But I guess that’s for me to know and you to find out.