The Prides of March

Okay, forget Trump. It's March 1 so there are two more important topics. One, of course, is that the month of March is when the Souplantation restaurant chain — known in some areas as Sweet Tomatoes — offers their Classic Creamy Tomato Soup. This is my favorite soup so I'll be dining at those places often during the next thirty days.  If you'd like to do the same, you can find out if there's one in your area on this page.

A few years ago, I had a relentless campaign going on this blog to persuade the company to make this soup a part of their regular lineup. I spoke to many people at the company. I blogged. I even indirectly caused Souplantation to be mentioned on the TV shows, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. The company thanked me with a lot of passes for free meals but did they heed my pleas and make my favorite soup available the other eleven months of the year? Nooooo.

Then in October of 2016, the company filed for bankruptcy protection and announced the closure of 20-30 restaurants and a few months later

San Diego-based Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp., which owns the Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants, will sell its assets to a New York private investment firm as part of its bankruptcy restructuring plan. The sale, which was approved in bankruptcy court on Monday, is expected to be completed by late January. Garden Fresh said that that once it emerges from Chapter 11 later this month, the restaurants remaining will total between 90 and 104.

I'm not saying the bankruptcy could have been avoided if they'd listened to me but the bankruptcy could have been avoided if they'd listened to me.

Actually, I haven't set foot in a Souplantation since last March. After being a steady customer — even during those dreary months when they didn't offer my soup — I found that all three of the ones I was frequenting had gone way, way down in quality. Maybe that had something to do with the changeover in ownership and maybe it was only temporary. I'll find out when I venture back into one in the next day or so.

I'm hoping they'll be back to their old standard so I can become a regular again. If not, I'll just send my assistant over for the rest of this month to get "to go" orders of the soup. And if they're really bad — like, so bad they make me sick — I'm ready for that because of the other important March topic. Tomorrow, I turn 65 and as of today, I'm on Medicare.