egyptian red lentil soup 16 oz. (hot)

Ingredients: Red Lentils, Carrots, Yukon Gold Potato, Onion, Garlic, Jalapeño, Cumin, Berbere Spice Mix, Black Pepper, Lemon, Cilantro, Olive Oil. Organic Ingredients. Five soups deep, kettle hot, 69th and 3rd. Sixteen ounce to stay, thirty-two to go.

It hits like a campfire stew after three days riding through dust and silence. First taste brings the warmth of home, thick and hearty, like the kind of meal you'd only get from a woman who still prayed for your soul. Red lentils and gold potato fill your belly like beans and bread used to, but smoother, like they've been simmering all day in a cast iron pot over mesquite wood. Carrots sweeten the bitterness of trail life. Onion and garlic remind you there's still fire in your blood. Then comes the jalapeño and berbere spice, a slow burn rising in your gut before a duel at noon. A squeeze of lemon cuts through sharp, like a clean shot. Cilantro fresh as creekwater. Olive oil slick and rich, like saddle leather on a well-worn horse. It don't taste like frontier food. It tastes like something you didn't know you were missing.

And lucky for you, you don't need a horse or three days of dust to find it. You just need to live on the Upper East Side. Hot soup, kettle-fresh, year round on 69th and 3rd. That's the kind of thing only a real New Yorker gets to call ordinary.