A Guilt Trip to Chicago

Joe and I just made a quick getaway to Chicago to see a fabulous show at the Goodman Theatre. Upon arriving in town, we deviated from an ingrained ritual and skipped making a lunch of the Bookbinder soup at the Drake Hotel. That divergence undid years of tradition and put me on an epic guilt trip. 

My father introduced me to Bookbinder soup as a teenager. He explained that as a young man, he would fill up cheap when arriving in Chicago by stopping at the bar of The Drake’s Cape Cod Room, where Bookbinder soup -- filling on its own -- was accompanied by a behemoth of a bread basket. I vividly remember sitting with my dad at the Cape Cod Room's bar, stuffing ourselves silly with sourdough rolls, soft pretzels, cheese bread, and soup at lunchtime. I pictured him doing the same in his youth. 

A sentimentalist, Dad spun meaning out of ritual and made little things feel special. 

Joe and I incorporated the Bookbinder tradition into our adult trips to Chicago. For years, we marked our arrivals with bowls of Bookbinder soup and baskets of bread.

Bookbinder soup with the
requisite sherry accompaniment 

If you are not familiar with it, Bookbinder soup originated in Philadelphia as a turtle soup. It dates back to 1893 and is named after Samuel Bookbinder, whom Wikipedia identifies as a Jewish immigrant from the Netherlands. By the time the soup made it to Chicago, the turtle was replaced by red snapper. Served properly, the soup is accompanied by a hit of sherry.

Over the years, some wrinkles introduced themselves. First, Hilton -- now the corporate custodians of the Drake’s legacy -- closed the Cape Cod Room for lunch service in the mid-2010s. You could still get the soup in the stuffy Palm Court -- which felt all wrong -- or later, in the woody Coq d’Or bar -- which was more intimate. Deprived of its proper setting, the homeless, sentimental soup somehow did not taste the same. 

Next, the marvelous bread basket disappeared. I blame corporate accountants for that egregious elimination. You would have to remind the waiter to bring the sherry. The hotel operator even had to put me on hold to ask around about whether the soup was available. She had obviously never even heard of it.

Finally, during our last Chicago trip in 2019, we learned that the Cape Cod Room had closed altogether. The soup I was served in the Coq d’Or bar in 2019 was cold, lacking in fish, and a watery whisper of the flavorful dish that my dad and I had enjoyed fifty years ago.

For our trip this year, I secured a difficult reservation at Monteverde, one of Chicago’s top restaurants. Fitting in the soup of yore posed a scheduling challenge. Joe -- who is as nostalgic as my dad was -- finally relented when I told him the Bookbinder soup just wasn’t fitting into our agenda. 

And so -- with much guilt and feelings of letting down my late father -- we had a Bookbinder-less Chicago weekend.

If my dad were alive today, I am sure I could explain it all to him. A culinary adventurer, he would have applauded the Monteverde reservation and understood about the soup. But I still feel guilty.

Traditions are fun and important and give meaning to the passage of time. 

Yet sometimes, traditions can feel like shackles that prevent us from having new experiences. The Drake Hotel itself does not seem to value its own Bookbinder soup heritage. Maybe they, too, felt shackled by the soup, or maybe they just didn’t care.

As for me, I am sure I will enjoy Bookbinder soup again someday -- I might even make it myself to celebrate my dad’s birthday in September. I feel a new tradition coming on.