My favorite foodie friend and fine dining companion is a fan of Union Square Café’s Chicken Tortelloni and Winter Greens in Brodo di Pollo.   She tells me the soup is hearty and delicious, with a unique dumpling that adds just the right amount of texture and flavor.    Last week, ever the foodie trouper, she bundled herself into a cab, cold and all, and headed downtown for a steaming hot bowl.  It worked.  Within just a few days her coughing, sneezing and sniffling were all gone and she was back to her old reservation-dialing self.  

Question: What do New York’s Union Square Café, leading research scientists, and your grandmother all have in common?

 Answer:  They all think you should come in out of the cold for a hearty bowl of chicken soup.  

Cold and flu season is here, and now more than ever it’s important to do what it takes to stay healthy and maintain your immune system.  For some,  that might mean heading to the doctor to get jabbed in the bicep with the flu shot du jour.  But serious food lovers know that a piping hot bowl of delicious chicken soup makes for a far better first course.   

Ever mindful of the health and well being of New York’s foodie establishment, Union Square Café and the six other top Manhattan restaurants of the Union Square Hospitality Group are each offering a unique and imaginative take on grandmother’s age old cure for the common cold.  And each time you order a delicious bowl of chicken soup through March 31, 2009 at any of their restaurants the Union Square Hospitality Group will donate $2 to City Harvest and help feed New York’s Hungry.

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Believe it or not there is real science to all this.  Researchers have found that chicken soup helps stop the movement of neutrophils, white blood cells that are released in great numbers by viral infections.  I’ll spare you the details, which involve a lot of icky cold stuff and really long scientific words, but suffice it to say that chicken soup has been proven to make you feel better when you have a cold.  If you think a cold is just another excuse for fine dining, then that’s all you really need to know.   

Bon Appétit

Rob Lubin

P.S. Click on “comments” below, and let me know your favorite restaurant destination for a delicious bowl of chicken soup.