The new store is located at 314 Carroll St. NW.

Full details below:

Soupergirl Brings Even More Local and Healthy Food to Washingtonians

Takoma store opens Wednesday, September 7

Washington, DC (August 24, 2011) – Continuing a quest to change how Washington eats, Soupergirl announces the opening of its first retail store in Takoma, DC.  The store will offer Soupergirl’s signature humorously named homemade soups and salads that feature seasonal, fresh ingredients from local farmers, as well locally sourced breads and baked goods. The store is located at 314 Carroll Street, NW, Washington DC, 20012, directly across the street from the Takoma Metro station stop on the Red Line.  The store will open on Wednesday, September 7 and will feature self service lunch and dinner along with take away options.

“Since starting Soupergirl in 2009, I’ve wanted to make it as easy as possible for Washingtonians to be able to enjoy our delicious and healthy soups,” said Soupergirl founder Sara Polon. “A store in Takoma is a natural evolution for Soupergirl because we’re surrounded by like-minded socially aware businesses and residents. In addition, our large new kitchen will enable us to increase the delivery and pick up service we’ve been offering for the past three years, allowing us to reach more people looking for convenient, nutritious and seasonally inspired meals with locally sourced ingredients. People want to eat healthfully and support local food producers and growers, but don’t have the time to shop and cook. That’s where we come in.”

Soupergirl’s soups are a fusion of modern flavors and old fashioned cooking techniques. Each batch is cooked slowly, from scratch and with love.  The creation of Soupergirl’s soups is a team effort between Sara and her mom, Marilyn Polon, aka Soupermom.  In addition to cooking, Sara works directly with the local farmers who provide the seasonal produce featured in the soups and salads and oversees the day-to-day operation of the business.  She also provides the comedic levity that makes its way into all aspects of Soupergirl.  In the test kitchen, Soupermom creates the recipes and transforms the farm fresh ingredients into the unique and distinctive selections that make up the evolving and entertaining menu.  All of Soupergirl’s soups, salads and baked goods are vegan and are under orthodox kosher supervision, a nod to Sara’s vegetarian lifestyle and Jewish upbringing.  Soupergirl’s creative offerings include: Souperpapa’s Papa Al Pomodoro Soup with tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive oil; Sing a Song About Watermelon Gazpacho with watermelon, tomato, cucumber and jalapeno; “Cream” of Asparagus made with vegan-friendly cashew cream; Harper Lee’s Quinoa Vegetable Soup with chunks of zucchini, red bell peppers, carrots, green beans, quinoa and basil; Jamaican Me Crazy Sweet Potato Soup with sweet potatoes, coconut milk, and dark rum just to name a few.

Soupergirl’s commitment to environmental, communal and social responsibility is evident in every aspect of the new store. All biodegradable scraps are deposited in the compost bins which Soupergirl shares with fellow residents of the conservation minded building in which the store is located.  Natural daylight fills the store through the expansive windows encouraging energy conservation in the restaurant.  Earth tones of brown and green are accented with touches of red, designed to invoke feelings of soup inspired warmth.  Dark wood tables and light green chairs made from 111 recycled Coke bottles (Emeco’s 111 Navy Chair), encourage neighborhood residents to linger over big bowls of soup, savoring every spoonful.   A view of the open, industrial inspired kitchen pulls guests into the Soupergirl experience, encouraging them to watch the cooking process – from the peeling of the local carrots to the seasoning of the final product.  A red, wooden window counter with street-side views of Carroll Street is perfect for individual enjoyment of soup and salad.  A story board above the cash register tells customers of Soupergirl’s core values – Fresh. Local. Good.  On any given day a neighbor with a passion for local, healthy food could be working behind the counter and graduates of DC Central Kitchen’s Culinary Job training program could be manning the stoves.  Proximity to Metro and several bike racks close to the store encourage alternative modes of transportation.

Diners can enjoy Soupergirl soups in the open dining area or they can pick up pre-packaged soups to take home.  Soups will be available by the pint and the quart. Prices will range from $4.99 for a small bowl of soup to $12.75 for a quart.  The store will be open Monday – Thursday from 10:00 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. and Friday from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. The store will be closed on the weekends, but Sunday hours will be added in the late Fall.

###

ABOUT SOUPERGIRL

Soupergirl is Washington, DC’s local soup company bringing delicious and health eating to Washingtonians one bowl of soup at a time.  Soupergirl’s soups are a fusion of modern flavors and old fashioned cooking techniques that highlight seasonal, fresh ingredients from local farmers and producers. Winner of the DC Affiinity Lab/William James Foundation 2009 Socially Responsible Business Plan competition and an aspiring addition to the growing trend of young, community-centric entrepreneurs passionate about “doing well by doing good,” Soupergirl creator, Sara Polon, is changing the way DC’s power players and Washington denizens eat.   Soupergirl soups can be purchased online at www.thesoupergirl.com, in store at 314 Carroll Street, NW, Washington, DC 20012 and at FRESHFARM Markets Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Farmers Market located at 200 Independence Ave, SW on Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. May – Oct.  To receive Soupergirl’s Soup Menu of the Week email, please go to www.thesoupergirl.com.  Soupergirl store hours are Monday – Thursday from 10:00 a.m. until 6:30 pm. and Friday from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. The store is closed on Saturday and Sunday.  Soupergirl can also be reached at 202.609.7177 and info@thesoupergirl.com.

Logo courtesy of Soupergirl

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

Some restaurants like to brag about their eco-friendly ways—I mean, seriously, half of Hook’s appeal has been its sustainability come-on—but some restaurants just are eco-friendly. OK, sure, Poste Moderne Brasserie has gotten a few press notices about its organic and sustainable garden in its courtyard, from which chef Robert Weland will pluck vegetables and herbs for his dishes. But did you know that Poste uses 100 percent recycled paper? Or that it composts all its food scraps? Or that it eliminated all bottled water in favor of its own filtration system? Yeah, I know, none of that means Weland’s food is worth a damn, but here’s the thing: It is. The discipline that Weland injects into his environmental efforts is the same discipline he injects into his kitchen. His dishes are among the most consistent in the area, from his superb terrines to his handmade pastas to his rotating selection of seasonal fish entrées, including his most recent, a wild Alaskan king salmon with parsley sabayon, salmon caviar, and spring onions.

Addendum: Y&H goes whole hog at Poste's courtyard pig roast.

 Poste Moderne Brasserie, 555 8th St. NW, inside Hotel Monaco, (202) 783-6060

Shortly before the holiday weekend, a small shitstorm started brewing over the the elevated levels of lead discovered earlier this year on the White House lawn, site of the vegetable garden heard 'round the world. In a column for Huffington Post, Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, wrote that National Park Service tests found "highly elevated levels of lead — 93 parts per million."

"It's enough lead for anyone planning to have children pick vegetables in that garden or eat produce from it to reconsider their plans: lead is highly toxic to children's developing organs and brain functions — however, it's below the 400 ppm the EPA suggests is a threat to human health," Kimbrell added.

As leader of the Center for Food Safety, a non-profit dedicated to fighting Big Ag and its anti-environmental and sustainable ways, Kimbrell figured he had cornered the devil living in the White House dirt: a commercial fertilizer called ComPRO, made from a wastewater plant's sewage sludge, which the Clinton Administration apparently had agreed to spread on the lawn during its temporary stay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a theory that Kimbrell borrowed from Mother Jones, which first reported on the possible ComPRO connection.

Kimbrell took this rare gift horse — a highly visible White House vegetable garden and a major commercial fertilizer with potentially harmful effects — and rode that sumbitch as far as he could go. He rode her hard:

So what is sludge, really? A stinking, sticky, dark-grey to black paste, it's everything homeowners, hospitals and industries put down their toilets and drains. Every material-turned-waste that our society produces (including prescription drugs and the sweepings of slaughterhouses), and that wastewater treatment plants are capable of removing from sewage, becomes sludge. The end product is a concentrated mass of heavy metals and carcinogenic, teratogenic, and hormone-disrupting chemicals, replete with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There are some 80,000 to 90,000 industrial chemicals, including a host of dioxin-like deadly substances, which are allowed to be present in sludge under current EPA rules. What's worse, there's no way of knowing which toxic chemicals and heavy metals are entering the wastewater stream at any given time or in what concentrations. Sludge is always an unknown quantity, and therefore, assessing whether sludge is safe to use for growing food, is — in practice — impossible.

Farmers who care about what they grow know this, and — despite the best efforts of government and the sludge industry — growing food in sewage sludge is prohibited under the federal organic regulations. Still, sludge is still widely used as a cheap alternative to fertilizer, and unless you're buying organic produce, it's impossible to know if the food you eat was grown in it.

Scary stuff indeed. Kimbrell continues hitting the spurs:

So when people living or working in the vicinity of sludged fields and when diary cows and other farm animals grazing on sludged land have gotten sick from heavy metal, chemical or pathogen based maladies, the EPA has either ignored, denied or, in some cases, even fraudulently covered it up. However it's getting harder for the agency to ignore the toll of sludged land as we see increasing reports in adjacent communities of elevated levels of cancer or deaths believed to be related to sludge exposure. In some areas where sludge has been heavily used, whole families are evincing the same symptoms: sores in their nasal passages, chronic staph infections, crippling headaches and sinus troubles. Yet — despite the mounting evidence — EPA wants to continue to promote sludge as a benign alternative to fertilizer.

And then Kimbrell rides his gift horse all the way to the front steps of the White House, where his steed kicks the Obamas square in the mouth:

The Obamas may be the newest sludge victims. Certainly Michelle Obama's hopes of having a truly organic garden and healthy vegetables for her own children and other children who visit the White House have been dashed. The impact on their lives is symbolic; it's not just the Obamas under threat, it's all of us. Municipalities around the country have jumped on the bandwagon to sell their "biosolids" to sludge companies, a convenient solution to profitably rid themselves of hazardous waste. Over the last several years, we have all become unwilling guinea pigs, testing the safety of foods raised on sewage-sludged land. We're also unknowing guinea pigs, since none of this produce is labeled to show how it was grown.

I have to admit, it's a pretty effective dismantling of sewage sludge as fertilizer. But then journalist Eddie Gehman Kohan, a food politics dynamo over at Obama Foodorama, wrote a rebuttal piece the following day for Huffington Post. It pointed out two majors flaws to Kimbrell's argument: that the lead levels are far below the 400 parts per million considered dangerous to childhood health and that the sewage sludge likely didn't cause the elevated levels of lead.

This, in short, is why real dogged reporting is so much more important than agenda-driven editorializing — even when the agenda is worth fighting for. Once you start exploiting public events and public personas — without checking all the facts first — you lose credibility.

Image by dbking via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

But that wasn't the only scene at Nathan's dinner party that caused someone to choke. Yesterday, Marian Burros reported this juicy little scene between Walter Scheib, a former White House chef, and Waters, who had criticized the Obamas for not replacing current White House chef, Cristeta Comerford, with a toque more aligned with the local/sustainable movement. Writes Burros:

Mr. Scheib and Ms. Waters made their way to an upstairs room and closed the door. His first words were: “I’m 100 percent behind your agenda. The only dilemma I had is over what you said about Cris, who is my friend,” a reference to Cristeta Comerford, who was hired by Mr. Scheib and was promoted to executive chef after he left, in 2005. “She can’t talk publicly so I became her surrogate. I defend my friends.”

Ms. Waters and others had suggested the Obamas replace her with a chef who would cook locally and sustainably. Mr. Scheib took offense, he said, not only because Ms. Comerford is a talented cook, but because the White House kitchen already does many of the things Ms. Waters has suggested.