100 Favorite Dishes, No. 24: The Mushroom Soup at The Grape

Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year. The bar twinkles. A gin martini that’s as cold and covered in ice as a Chicago street in...

By Nick Rallo

September 7, 2017

The Grape turns 45 this fall. Its mushroom soup is a Dallas icon. Nick Rallo

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Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year.

The bar twinkles. A gin martini that’s as cold and covered in ice as a Chicago street in winter sits in front of me, the olive glinting with Boursin cheese made in house. It’s at moments like this that you remember why this restaurant is so deeply warming and critical in a city that’s inflating — and at times imploding.

The Grape presents honest, simple bistro food, always with style but never with pretension. Warm bread is presented in a basket with a ramekin of marble-white, magnificently creamy butter. The famous mushroom soup shows up. A martini, some thickly buttered bread and a bowl of the mushroom soup are all you need in the world.

You know this soup. You've had and loved this soup: It’s piping hot, punctuated with chopped button mushrooms, garlic, fresh thyme and butter. Swirling with your spoon reveals a milk-chocolatey, nearly woodlike color that’s equally timeless. It is, without a better word, perfect. It’s the soup you should find in the dictionary when you look up the definition of soup.

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