RED BANK – Though specialty soup recipes are his passion, it’s the relationships Gary Sable will miss most when he hangs up his ladle and moves out of the narrow quarters he’s called home for the last 25 years.
Known as the “Soupmeister,” Sable has operated a Red Bank eatery named That Hot Dog Place since 1995, but recently sold the business to borough resident Steve DeAngelo. DeAngelo officially took the reins of the business Aug. 29 and will operate under a new name, Soul Sandwich. But Sable said most of the menu will remain intact.
“Steve is a great guy who has been a customer from the very beginning,” Sable said. “He’s been in here working with me every morning for some time now, learning my recipes. I trust him with this. And I already told my wife I’m gonna be back here visiting. I’m gonna miss the customers. I’ve known so many of them for so long.”
Over the years, if you strolled too briskly through the borough alleyway that connects the White Street parking lot to Monmouth Street, you could have easily missed the chalkboard listing of the day’s offerings at That Hot Dog Place. Customer Stan Montenaro, exiting the store recently with a cup of spicy sausage soup, described the 175-square-foot kitchen as a “claustrophobic hole-in-the-wall with a stove and a counter.”
“But I say that with affection,” he added.
In his final week of operation, Sable said he rolled out his “greatest hits,” including chicken escarole, Italian wedding, chicken tortilla and the option he said helped cement his moniker, chicken pot pie soup.
“That’s the one people love most. And I came up with it the same way I did everything else. All of these soups come from experimentation at home on the family for Sunday dinner,” Sable said. “If they didn’t spit it out and everything turned out OK, then I’d bring it down here.”
Sable said chicken pot pie has been his signature menu item. It was a painstaking process to crack the code and figure out the best way to make it.
After pondering the recipe for weeks, Sable said he was losing sleep over how to perfect the crust.
“You can’t have chicken pot pie without a good crust. How the hell am I gonna get a good crust on this soup?” Sable said. “So my wife, who doesn’t cook ver y much, she says, ‘Why don’t you make the crust on the side and serve it in a cup.’ Perfect! It’s like why didn’t you tell me this sooner? She goes, ‘You never asked me.’ That idea really helped make this place,” Sable said.
But what has truly helped That Hot Dog Place sustain its clientele is the engaging personality of the Soupmeister himself.
As they wait their turn in line for soup, sandwiches and hot dogs with sauerkraut, the lunch crowd banter is about new soup ideas, recently released rock n’ roll movies “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Rocket Man,” and Sable’s two favorite teams, the New York Jets and New York Yankees.
It’s more than chitchat, it’s a relationship developed over years and the thought of cutting these ties brought a tear to Sable’s eye.
“My wife is wondering why I want to come back and visit once or twice a month. And it’s because I’ve known some of these people for 25 years and honestly it’s going to be hard not to see them. That’s the toughest part of this whole situation,” Sable said. “When I think about it, there’s not one person who comes here that I don’t like. Before this, when I owned a bar, there were a hundred people I didn’t like. But here, not one.”
When the shop officially rebrands as Soul Sandwich, Sable said he plans to retain his reputation as a maestro of the culinary mélange, but for a new clientele.
A resident of Keansburg, Sable plans to practice his craft from time to time at the soup kitchen at the Center for Community Renewal, next to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 247 Carr Ave., Keansburg.
“Making soup is my passion and if I can use that to help out some of my community members then I’m happy to do it,” Sable said.
“Besides that, I’ll have a full schedule of picking up my grandson from school and watching after him.”
