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For the past few months, every time I've made a pot of soup I've started it with "cheater's chicken stock" -- store-bought chicken broth doctored up with carrots, onions, celery, a little wine and tomato, some garlic, and a couple of cloves. I got the idea from Lynne Rossetto Kasper of NPR's "The Splendid Table." With a little effort and in no time flat, you end up with a broth that's flavorful enough to make even an uncomplicated soup like chicken noodle taste like you spent most of the day making it. In fact, I've made more chicken noodle soup in the last three months than I've made in my entire life, and it's become one of my family's latest favorites.

Imagine my delight, then, when I walked into the Madison Park Café and Marketplace last week to find chicken noodle soup as their soup of the day.

A friend of mine, who is also a food lover, had previously told me about the time- intensive stocks that are made there daily. Over the course of two days, bones are roasted to bring out a rich and golden flavor then added to vats of stock that are simmered for hours and strained before being ready to become soup or sauce. The kitchen's effort puts my cheater's stock to shame.

And the chicken noodle soup was very tasty too -- deeply flavorful, deeply nourishing. A bowl of it with the hunk of baguette it comes with made for a satisfying lunch, especially with the slice of apple tart for dessert. Served with a creamy vanilla bean anglaise, the tart was another example of just how comforting this sort of rustic French food can be.

"It's the food your grandmother would make if she were French," is how my food-loving friend put it.

And she's right. Besides a daily soup there's always French onion soup, quiche, sandwiches such as Croque-Monsieur (the French version of a grilled ham and cheese sandwich), entrées including stuffed cabbage rolls and chicken and duck cassoulet (a rustic casserole of beans, meat, vegetables and herbs), and Nicoise salad (with pulled tuna, green beans, fingerling potatoes, tomatoes, egg, capers, and olives in a roasted garlic vinaigrette).

On my first visit, I decided on a piece of the spinach quiche with Gruyère cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and herbs. The portion was generous -- a quarter of a standard 9" tart -- and the filling custardy and flavorful. The pastry enclosing the quiche is homemade but didn't appear to have been prebaked before being filled up with custard, so it never had the chance to brown or even fully cook on the bottom. (The quiche is shallow, about an inch deep, so the custard is done long before an uncooked crust has time to brown.) I enjoyed the filling and was able to eat around the undercooked crust, but with a little attention this problem would be easily solved.

The quiche comes with a handful of mixed baby greens and a small serving of one of the café's changing prepared salads. I lucked into choosing the grilled corn salad -- perhaps my favorite item of all. Fresh from the cob, corn had been grilled then tossed with slivers of red onion, sliced cherry tomatoes, and, most intriguingly, capers, then tossed in a delightful vinaigrette. The flavors were enticing and mingled together in perfect complement.

I wanted to try something else off the menu, so I took home an order of the Poulet Penne Bake -- diced free-range chicken that's tossed with cheddar, vegetables, penne pasta, and chicken stock, then baked. This dish was tasty and satisfying -- somewhat like macaroni and cheese with chicken added -- but would have had more visual appeal with a little color to break up the shades of brown. A handful of parsley would do the trick.

The café makes their own chicken and lamb sausage, bakes their own bread, and makes their own ice creams and sorbets. Besides the apple tart, there's a case full of sweets including flan, bread pudding, and a decadent looking chocolate cake.

Lunch at the Madison Park Café and Marketplace is a casual, affordable affair, and a good opportunity to give the place a try. The dinner menu is more sophisticated -- with sweetbreads and pates, mussels and veal and boeuf Borguignon --and, accordingly, more expensive (with appetizers at $8-$12 and entrées at $12-$18). But after eating lunch here, you just may find yourself wanting to make an evening trip to the café, too.

I wasn't living in North Carolina when owners Paul and Joan Shepherd operated an earlier version of this new restaurant, more than a decade ago, on Dolley Madison. But I have to surmise that in the 10 years they ran that restaurant they must have attracted quite a following -- the Madison Park Café has been doing great business ever since opening less than two months ago.

Cheap Eats features local restaurants for diners on a budget. It runs every other week in Go Triad. Contact Angie DeCola at angiedecola@hotmail.com.

 

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