Her Soup Kitchen, Iowa City

This is my current favorite sandwich place in Iowa City. They have 12 sandwiches on the menu (plus five breakfast egg sandwich combinations). I have tried 5 of them (the Cuban, the chicken salad, the sweet avocado chicken, the turkey club, and the tomato mozzarella) and they are all excellent. These are sandwiches that you would need to have an assortment of ingredients to build at home, so even if you are an enthusiastic cook it would be difficult to put together a sandwich of this quality, and almost not worth it for one person. Her SOup Kitchen takes making a sandwich seriously, and the dedication to detail pays off--these are spectacular.

There are an abundance of salads to choose from if you do not wish to have a sandwich, and I suspect they are well done as well, because the side salads are excellent. The restaurant is family owned and very friendly--the service is swift and cheerful. They serve a complimentary cucumber water that is delicious, and they do so with an eye to conservation as well as convenience--you get a small glass and a carafe of water--so you pour a small amount of water at a time and don't leave so much on the table un-drunk. The only problem, which is avoidable but regrettable given the name of the restaurant, is that the soups are not good--I have tried three of them, all sounding quite good and none of them coming even close to what I could make at home. They are thin and bland--this is fixable, I am sure, but for the moment, have the side salad rather than the soup, and try all the sandwiches on the menu--I am well on my way to that goal.