Stone’s Soup?

In the kiddie classic Chicken Soup With Rice, Maurice Sendak — famed for Where the Wild Things Are — expounds on the joy of sipping his favorite fluid all year round. Local businessman Brian Stone, owner of the Garden of Eatin’ Café [1] at the Four Seasons Garden Center [2] in Williston, hopes visitors to Church Street share Sendak’s soupy passion. Later this month, he’ll open his as-yet-unnamed soup-’n’-grilled-cheese spot in the kiosk formerly occupied by Klinger’s Bread Company.

“I make cream soups, broth soups, chilis, stews and chowders,” Stone says. “I’ve been in the restaurant business since I was 17, so I’ve got 21 years of making . . . yummy comfort food.” In addition to traditional flavors, Stone proudly ladles up a few unusual varieties. “There are some that go a little off the wall, that I do more for myself to break the monotony and have a little fun,” he relates. “I make a yummy Thai peanut chicken. Around this time of year I make ‘turkey in a blueberry patch,’ which is a cream soup with turkey and blueberries.”

But even an aficionado like Stone knows eaters can’t live on soup alone. So he hit on a pairing that’s quick and easy to make in a 126-square-foot space: build-your-own grilled cheese. “The panini came out of the idea of complementing the soup,” he explains. “We’re gonna have a really good variety of cheeses. You pick your cheese, pick your bread and pick your dressing.” If all goes well, Stone will offer numerous artisan bread choices and perhaps a dozen cheeses.

How will a soup kiosk weather the summer, when folks are less interested in warming up? Besides making chilled soups such as gazpacho, kiosk staffers will whip up ice-cold smoothies, and perhaps fill a notable lacuna in the Marketplace food scene by preparing creemees.

But good works will be a year-round effort. For every bowl of soup he sells, Stone says, he’ll donate a bowl to charity. Although he’s still ironing out the details, he plans to make deliveries to agencies such as the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf [3] and the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger [4]. “The idea is to work with organizations that already do [food distribution] and bring it to them in bulk,” he explains. “That’s all in the works.”