In 1868, Soup Was Discovered in Portland!

People have sometimes asked me to pinpoint an exact time and place in history that soup was invented. Sorry, but this is an unanswerable question. Soup has been invented by many different civilizations in all corners of the earth. That said, we can identify an exact moment when soup was invented—or should I say, discovered—in Portland.

As legend goes, sometime in 1868 in what is now Oregon City, Oberon Pinscher III was building a fence along the edge of his newly settled homestead. It was late afternoon and he hadn't had anything to eat all day, so he was quite hungry. When he finally took a well-deserved break, and just as he was about to take a delicious first bite of one of his favorite snacks, bacon and succotash, a horrible shrieking whinny pierced the air. Oberon rushed across his property in the direction of the commotion. He was startled to find a wild burro mounting his prized mare. So he chased it off, but not before the deed was completed.

Upon returning to his food, which he had set on a tree stump, he realized a brief cloudburst must have occurred while he was tending to his horse, because the bowl was filled to the brim with water. Annoyed, he nearly chucked the sodden food into the woods, but stopped himself and instead carried it home to reheat. As it turned out, he found he rather enjoyed the taste of the pork-tainted rainwater. Soon thereafter, he started imagining what other combinations of food he could leave outside in a bowl in advance of a rainstorm.

Eleven months later, an adorable baby mule was born. Oberon named him Soopy, and soon set him to work plowing fields to grow carrots, celery, potatoes, leeks, herbs and a multitude of other ingredients to try out in his new hybrid rain-food experiments. He lived to a ripe old age, cataloging many soup recipes along the way, forming the basis for many of the soups we still eat today in Portland.

There is another Soopy of note in Portland lore. In the early 20th century, there was a popular restaurant called Soopy's in downtown Portland. I'm unable to verify whether the restaurant was named after the mule or if it was just an odd coincidence.

To most, Soopy's was one thing: decent bisques, average chowders, nonplussing porridges—hot and inexpensive. But if you knew your way around Portland's swinging social scene of the Prohibition era, Soopy's was something entirely different. Legend has it that to gain access to the speakeasy located beneath Soopy's, you had to seat yourself at a table by the window and request that the waiter bring you the "bathroom key." When he brought the bathroom key, you were supposed to slide it back to him and say, "No, no, the good bathroom key."

Soopy's was atypical of most speakeasies in that it didn't serve the usual cocktails in glasses with ice. It served only alcoholic soups. Tomato soup and vodka, for example, or limoncello bouillabaisse, or ghoulash fortified with fortified wine. Any kind of alcoholic soup you or old Oberon could ever have imagined.

Soopy's closed for good in 1931 following a police raid. Many were taken into custody, most notable among them "It" girl Louise Brooks, who made it a point to stop by Soopy's whenever she came to Portland on vacation.