The final three, from Gapers Block

Drive-Thru editor Robyn Nisi, who helped organize last week’s Gapers Block soup cooks — and then couldn’t join them at the bar that night, sadly — offers up recipes for the soups that did make it to the Hideout over on their site.

Also on Drive-Thru is an effusive appreciation of the Custom House “soup-off,” which took place this Sunday. Top honors were taken by Dean Zanella, formerly of 312 Chicago, who turned out a roasted tomato soup with mussels. 

I liked this bit, re: host Shawn McClain: “He offers an experience with fullness, a commitment to make your time in his house a decidedly memorable one (for both the brain and the palate). And beyond that, he’s fighting the good fight: toward agricultural sustainability, and against hunger and poverty.”

The Custom House publicist never got back to me, tant pis. We may not have the star power, or matching china, of McClain (though this week we do have the awesome  — and awesomely inky — Jill Barron) but I like to think that in our own raggedy, farm-league way we’re working from the same playbook.