Sweet & Sour Cabbage Soup

 

– Noshville –

$7.99 (Large Bowl) | April 2022

We moved to Nashville spontaneously, which is another way of saying we hadn’t thought everything through. Among those everythings: do they have stuffed cabbage in Nashville? In Ridgewood, Queens, New York, where we had last lived, the Polish delis take no prisoners; if you can’t properly pronounce paczki, there’s the door. How do you manage this, then, in Polish: “Please, two hefty, horizontal cylinders of cabbage packed with chopped meat and rice, adorned with a vinegary dressing. Oh, and a side of pierogies. Thanks!” You don’t. Just point.

Well, it didn’t take long to find out that even that rudimentary means of communication simply wasn’t happening in Music City. Cause there are no Polish delis. And no obvious place for stuffed cabbage. At one time, there was a Bosnian restaurant that had it on the menu. At one time. Alexsey’s Market, a Russian mini-emporium in Berry Hill, has many Eastern European staples…but not stuffed cabbage. The Bavarian Bierhaus at Opry Mills Mall had it, if memory serves, but they didn’t seem very committed to it, and now it’s not even on the menu.

So I gave up and daydreamed of Chicago. Until a few months ago, when I saw the dish was available at Shep’s Delicatessen (latest menu iteration no longer cites it, but I’m not bitter). Shep’s hours can be, uhh, fluid, and it didn’t work out for me. But in the middle of ordering a Reuben recently from Noshville, I saw something else on the menu: Sweet & Sour Cabbage Soup.

Is it stuffed cabbage? On a deconstructed level, perhaps, but no, not really. No rice, for example, and it’s a soup, there’s no getting around that, though the tomatoes are so gloriously thick throughout that you almost can’t tell. I’m guessing most stuffed cabbages skip the brown sugar, and probably the allspice (cinnamon, too?) as well. But, whoa. I may no longer care. The meat isn’t a burger in pieces; it’s better, likely from the rib. Flanken? The cabbage and onion are glossy, see-thru, and the soup, available to-go in a massive container, is transporting (and a hell of a good value). Could it be sourer? Yes. But I’ll look for a different reason to go to Chicago.