Restaurants: Where to have a souper lunch

Soup Opera

Concourse Level, Cabot Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 (0171-513 0880)

The substantial soups range in price from pounds 2.95 to pounds 4.20 for a seafood soup. They are served in three different sizes with complimentary bread and fruit and there is free delivery within the Docklands area. Another branch is due to open in the West End in the near future.

Soup Works

9 d'Arblay Street, London W1 (0171-287 5574)

Soup Works will serve more than a dozen different soups every day, as well as Froups - a combination of fruit juices and pulps blended together. Open from breakfast till supper. It is due to open at the end of November. Orders can be taken by phone, fax or the Internet. Prices range from pounds 1.85 for a small pumpkin and cheddar soup to pounds 5.75 for a large Boeuf Bourguignon.

New Covent Garden Soup Company

Main Concourse, Victoria Station, London SW1

Open Monday to Friday 7.30am to 10pm and 9.30am to 7.00pm weekends. Its fresh soups sell in nearly every supermarket and deli but you can sample the new winter range of parsnip, rhubarb and ginger and spicy corn chowder (pounds 1.40 a cup). There are also about 10 different flavours to buy by the carton if you prefer to eat your soup at home.

Novelli: Your Place or Mine?

By Jean-Christophe Novelli with Sheila Keating (Quadrille, pounds 25)

The book includes a recipe for pea and cured foie gras cappuccino soup, as well as recipes for gazpacho with white crab and coriander, and pea soup with pancetta.

NS