Last year in Orange, soup season kicked off a month before winter did with the Loop de Loop debut. The little soup kitchen in a demountable in the centre of town is where you’ll find chef Richard Learmonth ladling out an ever-changing pair of soups every weekday: one vego, one meatier. The people loved it last year – and the 2025 season is off to a hot start.

“As I’m speaking to you, I’m actually stirring a new menu item,” Learmonth tells Broadsheet. “Chilli crisp. Some people really like it spicy, some people don’t – and I’ve got to straddle that line. So now I have something that people can just spoon over if they want to give it a bit of a kick.”

The man – who spent time leading the Porteno and Pendolino kitchens, before making a country change – loves soup, any way you put it: “I eat soup year-round. I make them at home, I eat them in restaurants everywhere I go. But it’s very much a seasonal thing here. Winters are real winters [in Orange]; last week that cold change came through.”

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There are two Loop de Loop soups on the menu, with Learmonth making a double batch of a newbie around 6am, swapping one flavour out each day. Expect a wide-ranging line-up: simple classics like roast tomato and peppers, gruyere-topped French onion, and sweet potato jazzed up with local miso. Then there are noodle soups from around the world: laksa; Korean spicy beef with vermicelli; Balkan-style chicken noodle; Filipino chicken sotanghon; and Chinese duck with gai lan. Plus, funky ribollita; wild stinging nettles with mascarpone; a velvety chowder-style broccoli, potato and bacon; and roasted cauliflower bowls topped with gorgonzola and walnuts.

And they’re all $14. “It’s an idea of doing something cheap and cheerful, but still healthy and delicious. My friends can come in on the regular, every week.

“The local stuff is really the key driver. We’ve got so much great produce out here that it’d be mad to pass it up. I really love working in Orange. We’ve got a whole lot of late-harvest tomatoes and peppers, which are going to go on the menu this week while I still can. I’ll have truffles coming through soon.” Once the rain really sets in, foraged wild mushrooms will power the menu.

The obvious addition? Sippets, herbed-up square soup-specific croutons, says Learmonth. “They make every single soup better – it doesn’t matter what style, just little crunchy savoury bits.”

Loop de Loop’s a great sell for a rural town with a food scene that’s only been on the up. While it’s the home of Australia’s longest-running food festival, there are a clutch of outstanding venues – like cosy wine bar Hey Rosey and family-run winery Chalou – bringing new energy.

“In the seven years I’ve been here it’s just grown so much,” says Learmonth. “Very much ‘new generation’ coming through that are used to the standards in Sydney and Melbourne – and there’s no reason we can’t do that out here.”

Loop de Loop
43 McNamara Street, Orange

Hours:
Mon to Fri 11.30am–2.30pm (or until sold out)

@loopdeloopsoup