Fiesta Cafe's Chicken Tortilla Soup : Good for What Ails You

'Tis the season. Nasal passages closed up? Throat scratchy? Eyes watering? Head over (or better yet, send someone) to Fiesta Cafe and pick up a bowl or three of their sopa de tortilla. The steaming broth—filled with bits of tomato, onion, peppers, and celery, tender pieces of chicken, strips of tortillas, and sprinkled with fresh cilantro—will do you a world of good.

Now, you don't have to stir in a squeeze of lime or a large pinch of ground red pepper; that's just part of my own kick-a-cold routine (as is eating a clove or two of raw garlic—glad you're not living with me, aren't you?). Even without lime or red pepper, I feel certain that this is a healing brew.

And what a good value: $4.25 gets you the "grande" bowl. You can phone ahead for pick-up, or just stop by; it generally takes about two minutes for them to get the soup ready to go.

If you are taking it to go, and you want the tortilla strips to stay a bit crunchy, ask the folks at Fiesta to pack them separately; otherwise, by the time you get home, they'll have become soggy. I found that as the tortillas absorbed the broth, they came to resemble egg noodles (sort of), which only added to the this-could-be-grandma's-soup appeal in my book, so I didn't really mind the sogginess.

So have yourself a nice bowl of chicken soup. And feel better soon.

Fiesta Cafe
216 S. First Street
Champaign, IL
217-352-5902
Open every day, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Full menu

P.S. I'm filing this under Weeknight Takeout, because I think it qualifies. I do wish that Fiesta would invest in some real to-go soup containers (plastic, or, better yet, the coated cardboard variety) with sturdy, tight-fitting lids; right now, you'll receive your soup in large soft-drink cups, which are a little awkward to deal with and tend to leak.