Tulsa Fall Soupathon: Lisu Thai, Bishop Quigley, La Tertulia, Tina's, Sisserou's
November 1, 2024
It is soup season, my dudes. As Tulsa’s fourth or fifth fall blew in in recent weeks, with it arose my latent desire to sip from a warm bowl of something. And so I began my Soupathon: at least one bowl for every time I believed the season had changed.
Thankfully, Tulsa’s restaurants are too great in number and too diverse for me to tick every box in just five meals, so my ground rules were that at least one of the soups had to feel especially fall-themed, and no pho or ramen, because I could never confidently say I’d tried enough Tulsa pho or ramen to decide which one was worth mentioning. Happy sipping and slurping.
Lisu Thai's Khao Soi
It’s possible for me to say I’ve tried every khao soi in town, because—barring specials and pop-ups—there’s only one, and it’s at Lisu Thai. They serve the northern Thai version with egg noodles and a coconut milk and curry base, and since I first tried it years ago at other restaurants, I’ve ordered it every time I’ve seen it on a menu. Thai curry enthusiasts will recognize the look of the dish. It’s an opaque, orangey-yellow curry soup with flecks of spices and chile flakes throughout. The broth is thinner than the standard curries that come with rice, and instead of rice, this one comes both with boiled egg noodles in the soup AND fried egg noodles in a nest on top. Lisu Thai’s version is on the sweeter and milkier side, so even at spice level four of the available five, it isn’t painful. It comes topped with the traditional addition of sour mustard greens and a bit of lime, green onion, and cilantro, hitting every flavor note I can think of—crunchy, chewy, salty, sour, sweet, spicy—in a single spoonful. (See the header photo for proof.)
Bishop Quigley's Brown Soup of the Day
I did not get to choose my spice level or type or even color of soup at Bishop Quigley, where I blindly ordered the cheekily named “brown soup of the day,” an all-the-time staple of the limited menu. The soup I received on this particular day was a smoked pork posole, packed with a full serving of smoked pork roast and enough black pepper to black pepper a horse, to the extent it contributed to making the soup actually spicy. There wasn’t much hominy, and as usual the hominy it did have didn’t have much flavor on its own, but the broth was super tasty, porky and light and clean, despite having visible flecks of fat on top and falling between “reddish” and “dark” by the restaurant menu’s brown soup color wheel. The daily brown soup is available as a side substitution or in a bowl on its own, and if you order it in addition to a meal, don’t be like me: ask first if it’ll be a full bowl of roasted meat.
La Tertulia’s Green Chile Stew
Because I did not expect to have posole at a British-themed pub, I had to alter my next soup du jour, switching from the planned posole at La Tertulia to their green chile stew, which was—shock and surprise—brown! It had the vibe and starchy texture of leftovers, and I mean that in the most complimentary way; so few foods are improved by reheating, but this is one of them. With large chunks of carrot, potato, and celery with fatty beef, it tasted like a cozy, wintery beef stew with hidden spice, presumably from the green chile I could not see. It was not what I expected, but I was content to eat it alongside my $2 tacos during what I feel is Tulsa’s most underappreciated happy hour food special.
Tina’s Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese
Tina’s managed to debut its fall menu precisely one day before Tulsa’s first frost warning of the season. Therefore, I credit Tina’s with ushering in fall proper with its new tomato soup and grilled cheese. I don’t eat tomato soup by itself and so consider this pairing a fair entry into this Soupathon. At first bite, it’s tart and smooth and utterly normal. The floating dill frond on top and the invisible, building spice make it just a tiny bit special and dimensional but not so different that dipping the grilled cheese in it feels uncouth. I expected nothing less and also nothing more from Tina’s, whose smashburger is also the ideal version of itself.
Sisserou’s Butternut Squash Soup
In addition to soup-seeking, I have one other fall food tradition: attempting to widen my narrow tolerance of winter squash as edible rather than decorative. Nothing sends my taste buds running faster than a cucurbit paired with holiday spices, and my hope was that a Caribbean restaurant would do something other than add cinnamon and sugar to a naturally sweet vegetable. I was correct. Sisserou’s butternut squash soup is really simple, maybe the least unique thing on the menu. It’s just a smooth, blended squash soup with “herbs and spices” I couldn’t quite identify, topped with a drizzle of cream and chopped chives. It is naturally sweet, but they don’t double down on that sweetness. If you drew a cartoon fall soup, this would be it. It is precisely the sum of its parts. In the context of this write-up, it’s ironic that the one restaurant assertive enough to serve a Scotch bonnet hot sauce with its bread and butter course is the one that served me a soup with no discernible Scoville units. But its normalcy is bold in its own way, like a good accessory that works with any outfit.
Tulsans, we are spoiled by soup choice, and these five selections are just a drop in the stockpot. A good fall soup to me is seasonal, probably blended, maybe orange or red, and feels like a heated blanket for your insides. But a really good soup works anytime, anywhere, whether the weather brings you to it or not. Hark! The herald leaves are crunching underfoot, so now is the time to replace some of your body's 60 percent water content with broth, but hurry—Tulsa’s sixth summer arrives any minute.
