Soup and Sandwich c/o Atwater's

After a couple of hours on the farm I was definitely a bit peckish, having forgone breakfast and lunch in favor of a speedy arrival. I was not alone in the desire for a little belly padding, so as we wended our way out of horse country and into suburban Towson/Baltimore, V. directed us to Atwater's. It remained a warm and sunny day, so we opted to sit outside. A server quickly came and took our drink orders (I went with half raspberry iced tea, half lemonade). A woman sitting next to us had her lap dog properly in her lap, and was having a quiet conversation with it while feeding it bits of her meal. I worried that one day I could become that sort of woman, except I loath lap dogs, so I'd probably just be talking to my sandwich. I chose to order a cup of the red pepper, broccoli and shrimp soup and a sandwich. The soup size was solid and the soup good if overall unremarkable. The shrimp were a little small and shriveled, the kind of shrimp I usually imagine came pre-cooked from a frozen bag. But I could be wrong. Atwater's seems to pride itself on the freshness of its ingredients, so perhaps I'm being too snobbish. My father's first spoon of his Moroccan-style soup was a little tepid. When he asked the server if she might bring it back to kitchen for a little time in the microwave, she looked concerned and said that they didn't have a microwave. She didn't seem to think there was a way to make the soup any hotter, which is kind of difficult to believe. My father ended up then stirring the bottom of his bowl in with the top, and that seemed to improve the overall temperature. Still, a strange reaction to a rather simple customer request.

For my sandwich I chose a take on a Cuban: ham, cheese, pickled jalepenos, spicy mustard, lettuce, and avocado. It wasn't pressed and the pickle was on the side, but it hit the spot after a day of driving and standing around in the sun.