How often do you find yourself addicted to something that is cheap, good for you, and nonfattening, not to mention legal? Hot and sour soup has all of these virtues. A pint of hot and sour soup usually costs less than $2, it makes a richly and warmly satisfying meal when you're cold and hungry, and it's nearly fat free. For that same $2, some places even throw in a load of fried wontons (which, of course, scotches the "good for you and nonfattening" part of the equation) and a fortune cookie. During a recent flare-up of my long-standing love affair with hot and sour, I decided it was time for some comparative shopping.There are over twenty Chinese hot and sour soups in Ann Arbor, so each place got only one visit. Is that a fair test? Maybe, maybe not. I know from experience that San Fu's hot and sour soup rarely varies and neither does Gourmet Garden's. Dinersty's can sometimes be nearly tasteless, but they were having a good day when I was there for the official taste test. Oriental Express varies their ingredients, but it's always good. As for the rest, I went tabula rasa, with either no experience or no memory prior to my sampling.

wenty years ago, Eisenhower Parkway was an empty southern beltway, and the Bombay Bicycle Club was its sole chain "casual dinner house" restaurant. But the species cloned and bifurcated along with the development of Ann Arbor's south side, and today BBC faces half a dozen competitors between Ann Arbor-Saline Road and State Street alone. These chains share McDonald's numbing consistency, add hyperactive waitstaff, and serve their prefab fare up amid whole phyla of plastic ferns.

Bagels may well be the greatest contribution Jewish culture has made to mankind since the Ten Commandments. A superstitiously "lucky" delicacy dating back to seventeenth century Eastern Europe, they were baked as a gift for both new mothers and mourners, as their shape was taken to symbolize the great circle of life. Bagels emigrated to the New World along with their adherents, and flourished as the supply of cheap white flour in the booming immigrant communities of New York and Montreal made them more affordable. Today, bagels have surpassed their softy cousin the doughnut, launching well-capitalized chains and almost doubling per capita consumption - now at 4.5 pounds/year in the past ten years.