El Greco

EL GRECO IS CLOSED.
Went by this weekend; doors locked, notice on front door from landlord. Called just now, no answer.

This evening was my first experience at El Greco, and I was pretty impressed. (I did not go because of this Chef Ramsay character — I don’t know who or what that is). I called in a To-​Go order but then I got an important phone call, so I didn’t get there within 15 minutes, like I said I would. After a half-​hour, they called me to make sure I wasn’t lost, which was nice. Overall, in fact, my interactions with their wait staffer were very good.
They had my order ready to go when I got there, and I admired the interior while I waited for the server to finish serving some wine and come help me. The only negative about the place, to my mind, was that the interior doesn’t quite do it for me. I perceived the place as being very blue, and the waitstaff as being overly dressed for what seemed to be more like a Diner than a casual restaurant. I think they need to work out their identity with that part — is it the kind of place I can go in and order something to go from the counter, or is it primarily a sit-​down place with wine? I ended up getting «the check» in the traditional credit card book, despite the fact that I was just picking food up. Overall, I was pretty happy not to be eating at the restaurant.
Price wasn’t a huge deal for me since I was using a Moolala voucher that I bought a while back. Nevertheless, my first impression was that it seemed a bit high, given my image of the place as a low-​cost Greek «deli,» rather than a sit down «grill.» But my Beef Moussaka was excellent, and well worth the $ 10 price tag, especially considering the tasty Greek Salad that came with it. I thought all the ingredients tasted fresh and well-​prepared. My praise would extend to the desserts, as well (I got both baklava and ravenee), which were very well done.
I did like the place and I would like to go back to try their other options, particularly the pita and hummus. Also, I hope they add Dolmas to their menu offerings at some point. Nice job, El Greco.

Again — Absolutely love this place — you have to know how to order though! Ramsay put some things in place that are relavent to the area (lots of college students) and you just have to get around them! If you would prefer a greek salad over fries with your gyro — ASK! If they are running the pork Gyro as a special, order it!
(***this below from someone who runs numbers for a restaurant)
And as to the complaints about pricing — maybe you should go to some place that is not a small local business! The thing that most people don’t understand is that when you are a large corporate restaurant (lets use Red Lobster as an example) and you order 600lbs of crab at a time you get a much better wholesale price than say a small restaurant that doesn’t push as much product. If the small local business doesn’t raise it’s prices, it will go out of business.
Higher prices are the result, and are a reality if you want to eat locally and support sustainability.

Unilocal’s «Meh. I’ve experienced better» tagline fits perfectly.
I visited El Greco on Wed. night (¹¹⁄₂) and was quite disappointed. I had been here before the ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ TV shoot and the place was much better… better menu options, cheaper prices, etc…
We came in at 7pm for dinner and they were already out of quite a few menu options, and apparently we ordered the last of our respective dishes. The food quality was ok, not great. Service was fine, nothing outstanding or amazing. And apparently, the owner doesn’t take coupons anymore, so if you bought a ‘daily deal’ coupon, well they are no longer accepting these.
My advice… go visit Tino’s… a much better Greek option.

Went here for lunch. Never been here before but heard that Gordon Ramsay had filmed a Kitchen Nightmares episode here a couple of weeks ago.
It’s a small restaurant. I could immediately tell that some sort of makeover had taken place. fresh paint, new looking décor etc. I dont know what it looked like before but it looked good except the stripes on the wall seating. eek. i would have painted the entire thing white and added a long dark blue cushion along the seat… but thats just my opinion.
Fried calamari: So good. The sauce that accompanied it was tangy and had a good zip.
Homemade Gyro: It was ok. The pita was fresh and very good. The gyro meat itself had a good flavor but was crumbly and reminded me of meat loaf. Overall it was ok… BUT i dont understand why this dish came with fries??? The fries were piping hot and seasoned with something that had no salt whatsoever and i’m pretty sure were frozen. A small greek salad would have been a much more appropriate choice. Really bizarre. I’m wondering if we had come too late and El Greco had already reverted back to old ways. I just dont see Gordon Ramsay approving of frozen fries with homemade gyros. It just doesnt make sense.
Our mains didnt come out at the same time which was kind of disappointing.
Overall, i think its worth giving a try. It takes a lot of courage to go on something like Kitchen Nightmares. I think theyre still working out some minor details but i can see coming back here.

When I heard that Gordon Ramsey had just finished an episode of Kitchen Nightmares here, I knew I had to try this place out. I wish I had been there before the episode so I could compare before and after, but oh well, at least I was gonna’ get to experience the new-​and-​improved restaurant just six days after Chef Ramsey’s makeover.
First impressions were pretty good. The place looked nice enough, we were greeted at the door by a friendly waiter named Peter who was also our server for the night. But then, when Peter saw me checking in on Unilocal,he commented that the Unilocal reviews in this town are way too harsh. Hmmm… that’s not a good sign. And sure enough, that’s about when the trouble started.
They were out of our initial wine selection, so Peter recommended an alternative. I tried to order the lamb pita, but they were out of lamb meat, so Peter recommended the flank steak. We tried to order the falafel appetizer, and Peter advised us against it. You see, this was the new falafel appetizer, put in place by Chef Ramsey, and Peter assured us that the old falafel appetizer, now called «zuchinni fritters» were much better. Taking his advice, we ordered the fritters. They were, in fact, really good, but the serving size was way too small to justify the $ 6 price. They should be $ 3 or $ 4 at most.
Then came the main course. Well, actually, the main course came about 45 minutes later. We had already finished our entire bottle of wine, the zuchinni fritters didn’t last very long to begin with, and we were ready to eat our own arms off by the time we finally got our food. And when we finally did get it, we were saddened to discover that it was not at all worth the wait. Both of our pitas were mall-​food-​court quality at best. Very dry, with little flavor to speak of. And they were served with french fries. FRENCH FRIES! What kind of side dish is that at a Greek restaurant?!? Give us hummus, or falafel, or olives, or dolmas — SOMETHING GREEK! And they weren’t even good fries. They brought back images of so many middle school cafeterias past.
BUT THEN IT GOT EVEN BETTER (read: worse)!
While we were eating our mediocre meal, some sort of argument broke out in the kitchen involving the owner, a couple cooks, and Peter, our server. I’m not sure what it was about, but it ended with Peter and the two cooks quitting and walking out! And as if that wasn’t awkward enough, the entire restaurant was then left with only one waitress to serve all the tables. And, though she tried her best, it was simply too much for her. Service suffered, empty glasses went unfilled, checks never came, and — long story short — we ended up getting our meal for free. I went ahead and paid for the bottle of wine, because it was actually pretty good, but I’m happy I didn’t end up having to pay $ 6 for those zuchinni fritters or $ 11 for those terrible pitas.
Maybe when the Kitchen Nightmares episode airs, I’ll get some new insight about El Greco that will convince me to give them another shot. Or maybe not. But either way, their challenge for the time being will simply be to stay in business for that long.

I’ve been searching for something inspiring to say about El Greco.
Dear Gordon Ramsey,
Marry me! Your butt is adorable and your hair is perfect. I’m not the best cook but this girl can eat. I also might have told everyone on Unilocal that it took every last ounce of self restraint not to grab your butt when you asked what was wrong with my terrorized, lemon juiced to death, fried feta. That was me! Remember, you asked what was wrong with it?
It’s okay, you’ve probably already replied to my written marriage proposals posted all over your trailer. No worries, the mail here in Round Rock is super slow. I’ll just take your word for it. Does Paris sound good? Yes? Perfect, I’ll pick a date.
Love always,
Katie
Oh, right, you wanted to read about El Greco! Well, it’s overpriced, I can tell you that much. $ 8.00 for a fried spinach treat is interesting, but annoying when it arrives on a cafeteria plate which a giant glob of yogurt. The fried feta was doused in lemon juice — paired with balsamic vinaigrette I wondered if I were eating melted sour patch kids.
My gyro was pretty meh. The chicken patty wasn’t fresh, totally SAM’S Club style, all pre grilled and then post grilled. I actually sliced my gum on a charred to death slice ‘o chicken. My dining buddy had the lamb and the less then impressive potatoes. Really, $ 16 some odd dollars for some casper looking potatoes? Nasty.
The baklava was delicious. It did have nuts, by the way. It was also shaped in the strange intestinal shape — very non-​traditional. It was good, but not my favorite baklava ever. Especially for the price!
Our saving grace was Dustin. If Gordon doesn’t marry me I’m going to ask Dustin. Not only is he the cutest… he’s the sweetest! He effortlessly catered to us throughout the entire evening. I know he was exhausted and despite what he might have felt he was nothing short of amazing.
The other star earner was the cute little Greek lady I met leaving the restaurant. Sure, this is reality TV folks. It’s also the lives of the owners. I met her outside upon leaving and thanked her for the opportunity. She looked me in the eyes, with tears in her own eyes, and she said «I hope this was the right thing to do, I want this restaurant to be successful.»
I’m more hopeful then I am watching most Kitchen Nightmare shows… having met the Chef, the cute Greek lady, Dustin, etc., I think this is a family of can-​do-​please-​show-​us-​how kind of people.
I never usually go back to restaurants under 4 stars. I am looking forward to my next visit already.

My sweetie and I were curious, hearing that Chef Ramsay is doing a Kitchen Nightmare episode here. We also had a Groupon Now. Even with a $ 5 discount I was MOST unimpressed.
We wandered in about 9pm, and the place was mostly empty. Staff was friendly and we got ice teas pretty quickly. I perused the menu while our waitress was getting our drinks, and noticed a number of items had the price blackened out. When our waitress returned I asked if those items were no longer available. Her response was that the prices had gone up on those items because the cost of lamb from Australia had gone up. Then immediately asked if we were ready to order. No. I’m not, says I.
Without any idea what the prices were on most of the entrees, I decided to order the Pork Souvlaki pita. Sweetie wanted the Chicken gyro. She wanted to start with Spanakopida (sp) but was told they’d just run out. However, we should try the fried feta, it is sooooo good!
So we did. After about 15 — 20 minutes the cheese arrives, looking like a couple of fish sticks from a school cafeteria on a plate surrounded by a drizzle of olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar. Another waiter cleaning a table nearby sees our plate and gushes about how much we were going to enjoy it. It was very disappointing. It needed something to add flavor to it and the oil and vinegar wasn’t enough. It was pretty much a warm salt paste.
A little bit later our sandwiches arrive. They looked tiny on the large white plate that were served on. They either need to add a side, a garnish, or use a smaller plate. I saw in one review someone gushed about the pita… I’m curious if they’ve ever eaten real pita because this isn’t. This was that store bought pita that’s like Wonder Bread. It was soft, it was tasty enough, but it wasn’t pita. The meat in both our sandwiches were tasty, but these were really small sandwiches for $ 8, especially since I am certain the chicken in my sweeties sandwich was precooked. It was most, tasty, and barely room temp.
And then she gets Baklava… at least that’s what they called it. First, there were no nuts in it. Period. Secondly, it was a tube of phillo wrapped around unmelted brown sugar, coiled, honey topped and served right from the cooler. Really?
I will be watching for this episode of Kitchen Nightmares in order to confirm all my suspicions, as I won’t be going back.

I debated whether to write this review in the same way a person might debate pissing on an conflagrant asshole, I didn’t want to do it but humane duty insisted.
When choosing El Greco, I expected a low-​key Greek establishment where I could have a nice conversation over quality food without too much hassle. What we got was a really long conversation about the various locations of our food, drinks, and waitress.
Strike #1 — It took 15 minutes for the waitress to come to our table. Add another 5 minutes to that for our drinks (water and soda).
Strike #2 — Took another 15 minutes (30 minutes total at this point) to get our appetizer. Keep in mind that when we arrived there were only four other parties (non of them large).
Strike #3 — Wrong fcuking appetizer! The waitress apologized and encouraged us to take the plate brought out so she wouldn’t have to get yelled at… again. We obliged out of compassion… and hunger.
Strike #4 — My girlfriend and I thought it was a bit strange to see both ‘chefs’ walk outside for a smoke break despite our lack of entrees. We both hypothesized and took small bets as to what would be the problem this time. It turned out that the chefs never received our entrée orders. Again the waitress profusely apologized and said they were expediting our orders… once they finished with their break.
Strike #5 — For what El Greco charges for food, this restaurant shouldn’t be self-​service. And yet, I got 90% of our drink refills. I’m not above serving myself but I shouldn’t have to pay for it. After all, isn’t that part of the reason I’m at a restaurant to begin with.
Coup de grace — The food was forgettable and salty. The orzo was a step below some chef boyardee creation, and the rice pilaf was dry white rice. If i wanted shitty salty food, I would have made it myself.
Please, for the love of God, don’t go here. If you want a similar experience to that offered by El Greco, sit in a hallway with a friend for an hour and a half and tear-​up $ 40.

El Greco has long been an Austin institution. Why do they continue to offer deals upon deals for $ 10-​$ 15 off of their Greek-​inspired grub? Well, I believe it is because this diner charges 2 times what it should. As a college kid, I should be eating $ 2 plates of hummus, and $ 4 fresh gyros from trailers.
The location is tucked back into a neighborhood, but El Greco definitely has a local following. The menu is large, the food is not bad, but seriously… $ 40 for a filling dinner for 2? Without alcohol?
A small soup, a nice soup, a hearty soup of white beans: $ 6! Yikes! That is nearly the cost of a lobster bisque. Of course, you get simple white beans instead of white crustacean meat.
A large platter of eggplant-​walnut dip with tons o’ pita. Good, but how much is this REALLY worth? Not $ 8.
A plate of rather dry chicken, rice, peas. I appraise this at $ 7. But the menu says $ 15! No! Hogwash!
Ok, ok, zucchini falafel. Delicious, crunchy, and surely cheap! Nope $ 7. Hm… something is awfully fishy with the pricing here.
I did not get to the bottom of why they think they can charge so much here. Pita comes with everything, so I guess they figure they can fill you up easily, thus you should pay a premium. Maybe go use a coupon here, and see if the food is really worth it. I thought my food was good, but mostly because I had $ 10 off. Great service, though… saving grace.

The food was fine. The service was actually pretty decent, until AFTER we closed out. My boyfriends mother has this (awesome) habit of purchasing us Groupon’s, BuyWithMe’s, things of that nature. She recently bought us one for El Greco for $ 20 towards dinner.
Anyway, after dinner our total came to $ 44.59. We gave him our $ 20 credit thing and a credit card. He charged our card $ 30.97, and informed us that the BuyWithMe voucher has the gratuity included. This seemed odd to both us so we asked and he gave us some answer that I don’t even remember and just walked away. I get home and check the website and it states «Gratuity is not included: please tip on the full value of the meal where applicable, not the voucher price (average tip is 15−20% of the original value).»
What I am trying to say here dude, is that if you automatically charged us 15% for gratuity you basically dicked yourself out of money because we very rarely tip less than 25%. Maybe I’m just a little butt hurt because I feel stereotyped.

I was at this place one day when a huge mob of rowdy Persians tried to get in. I mean, there were hundreds of them. They must have been celebrating a World Cup victory or something. If they had gotten in, I’m sure they would have trashed the place. There were only three or four staff in the restaurant and somehow they kept all the Persians out. I don’t know how they did that.
Anyway, I have been here several times for lunch and it has always been good. The staff is friendly and always make me feel welcome.
This is not your typical gyro shack. They have all kinds of dishes, and everything I’ve tried has been good. My favorite dish is the white bean casserole. I have a sweet tooth so if I’m not in a hurry or overly concerned about my weight, I order one of their substantial desserts.

Sometimes when I take a bath I pull the plug and I think the water is going to drain slowly, but it actually drains much faster than expected. Because of this, I am sometimes hesitant to pull the plug because it was a nice bath and I don’t want it to be over yet even though I am done with it. This pretty much sums up my feelings about El Greco.
It’s true — some of their food is very tasty and they have good intentions. However, it is also true that some of the food is seriously over-​priced and under-​portioned. I went yesterday and had a hellacious customer service experience — rather than drag us through all of the gory details, I will make suggestions based on my experience.
1. if you are a Greek restaurant, don’t charge $ 2 extra for a greek salad when it is served as a side item. If I wanted a regular old house salad instead of a greek salad, I would go to pretty much any restaurant OTHER than a greek restaurant.
2. if you are charging $ 2 extra for spanakopita as a side item and the menu says that I will get (2) spanakopita, don’t bring me one and then tell me that it is the lunch portion. It made me feel like I was buying a car and choosing the most expensive features, only to find all that they are all style and no substance.
3. consider developing a more organized serving system. During the 1.5 hours that I spent at El Greco, we were served (poorly) by three people and NO table got all of their food at once … I realize that they were very busy because it was lunch time, but it was obvious that the current system is not working.
Unfortunately for me, this was not my first unpleasant experience and the prices are SO high. Unfortunately for El Greco, there is lots of competition down the street at Milto’s and Tom’s Tabooley where the prices are affordable and they don’t treat things like greek salad and spanakopita as luxury items.

We’ve been here a couple times, and I think my overall impression is — just get the meat. Everything else is just «meh.» But some of the meat is very good. Since it’s been awhile since I’ve been, I’ll base this off of my most recent visit. A nice plus is you can have dogs on the patio, but the downside is it’s pretty hard to get service attention out there. We went on a Monday night, and the place was slammed, with only ONE server working. We know him from Mangia’s, and we like him a lot, but he was totally overwhelmed. I think it took close to an hour to get our order (to be fair it took us awhile to get our order in, but it was still a really long wait after that) — and we had pretty simple plates to prepare.
We both had the gyro platter, I got pork, he got chicken. I had orzo and «Greco fries,» and he had the rice and fries. My meat was not what I would describe as gyro meat (which I think of as compressed meat cooked on a spit and sliced off into thin bits of goodness), but was still juicy, flavorful, and very good. It was more like pork fajita meat than gyro meat. The chicken was purportedly also very tasty, but less juicy. The rice looked good, but the orzo was tepid (wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be warm or cold) and not very flavorful. The fries were just your basic thin, crispy fries, not unlike McDonald’s in appearance (but crisper). Nothing Greco about them, just plain fries. The tsatsiki sauce was ok, but they were pretty stingy with it. We had to ask for more (which they did give us without charge).
One substantive complaint was that the prices were out-​of-​date on the menu. And when we brought it to their attention, they already knew! I think it’s pretty bad to have paper-​printed menus with old prices on them. It’s not like they are fancy menus, just printouts. Or at least let us know the new price. We had a coupon and were trying to figure out what we had to spend, and not knowing accurate prices meant we had nothing left for dessert, which we did want to try. Oh, well.
As I said, the meat’s the best thing here. We have previously had the meat-eater’s plate, and while I don’t remember anything about the sides, I remember thinking the meat was good.

El Greco is like the guy/​girl you thought was really hot from far away, but up close, kinda ugly. So after my friend M and I finished up a Gentle Hatha class, we were both hungry, and El Greco was right across the street. It was around 8:40, and we knew there weren’t going to be that many options. We walk in, and the place is pretty much empty except for a four-​top that had been there for a while, it seemed. The waitress was very professional and didn’t pull any of the «we’re almost closed and I want to go home so I’m going to be rude/​inattentive» crap.
I decided to get the Meat Eater Plate and M got the Pastitsio. When the food came out, I was not very impressed. There was one pork kabob, a smallish lamb chop, and a pork gyro (looked like a pork chop). The reason I gave this place one star is because ALL of it was under cooked. You know that really chewy texture that meat has when it’s not cooked all the way? Yeah, that’s what I was getting. I have a feeling the cooks were not as cool as our server and wanted to GTFO so they cooked everything half-​assedly, slapped it on a plate, and called it good. You know what? Not cool. I could’ve sent it back, but I really wasn’t in the mood for eating someone else’s bodily fluids, and they were pretty much closed by that time anyway. Oh also the salad that came with the Meat Eater’s plate had way too much dressing on it.
Conclusion: I would rather eat at Kismet.

My bookmark list is overflowing with places I need to review. But occasionally there’s a place so good or bad it gets bumped up to the top of the list. This is that place. I had to write a review immediately.
BLEGH!
I bought a gift certificate from
to use here, worth $ 10 off a minimum $ 20 purchase. I figured I could do this on my own, as I looked at the menu online and needed some fried calamari in my life– which is $ 9.99 as an appetizer by itself. So, that plus a meal equals $ 20 easily. I was a little surprised that this was a walk-​up at the counter and order type place, but whatever, no big.
I walked up to order and was told they were out of calamari. NOOO!!! There go my dreams. So to still be able to use my discount, my friend and I put our orders together. The girl at the counter messed up our order a couple of times, but she repeated it back before any major damage was done.
We get our cups, and go to the drink station. The Coke Zero and Coke are both flatter than my chest in sixth grade. We decide it’s just a fluke and sip our syrup anyhow. Our table has this white sticky substance on it, which I can’t manage to wipe up. I ignore that, too.
After about 15 minutes of waiting (far too long over lunch, IMO) we finally get our appetizer of spinach pies… I forget the actual greek name. For $ 5.25 we only got 2 tiny spinach pies. That’s it. Totally not worth it. Pluuus, two bites into them, we discover they are freezing cold. Which tells me that these puppies aren’t fresh, and that they were frozen. They take them back and offer us some free hummus for our troubles. The hummus was in a generous serving, but it was far too lemony.
The food comes out while we’re still waiting on our newly hot spinach pies– my friend’s Greek Burger and fries arrive. She takes a couple bites of the burger but decides it’s not worth making herself eat, and just eats the fries. My moussaka was actually pretty good, but the side house salad was a pile of lettuce with huge uncooked onions and carrots– aka disgusting. Not to mention that the food barely fit on the plate and I had to cautiously pick up every bite so as not to make a mess. We eventually get some new spinach pies, which I swear were even smaller than the first two, and they were totally disappointing. No flavor, not enough cheese or other spices in with the spinach.
I absolutely will not be back.
It gets stars for: decent moussaka, and offering 10% off any purchase or a free appetizer with purchase of two entrees with the Go Local Card, of which I’m a proud owner.

Fantastic food, run by a sweet Greek family. It was our first time visiting so the lovely owner brought us chicken soup and bean soup to try. Both were awesome! The tzatziki and souvlaki were both delicious, too.
Minus one star only because the prices were somewhat higher than you would expect, and the portions are pretty small.

My heart wants to give this place 10 stars. However, I need to be rational; all 1 people reading my reviews depend on my clear-​headed honesty.
The food here is good. It’s quality, dependable food with solid flavors and a genuine regard for healthful cooking. However, I found the portions to be a bit small for the price, and while quality is invaluable, I have had quality food in Austin that leaves me some leftovers. Even with a $ 10 coupon to go try it out, no-​leftovers dinner for two was 22 bucks. So otherwise $ 32 for a cafeteria-​style setting, good food that fills to the «content» point, and having to go up and order anything else you want… I don’t know. Some folks might be all right with that on a normal basis. The chicken kebab was trustworthy, but just a single kebab with small pieces on it. The pita that came out was cut into small triangles that made it hard to pita my chicken and veggies into it. That made me sad.
But the owner is a real reason to amp up the stars. This sweet woman came over and had my nearly-​vegetarian boy convinced to come back and try a meat gyro. She was very interested in knowing how we enjoyed our meals, and was just a darling mom type. It made us feel at home.
I’d go back to try something else. What the hey.

I spent two weeks in Greece almost a decade ago, and (like all boorish buffoons who try to appear more worldly than they are in a lame attempt to impress people) I consider myself the world’s foremost expert on Hellenic cuisine.
I’m kidding. Mostly I just get really, really excited about Mythos beer. I spent a lot of time drinking a lot of Mythos beer when I was in Greece. So El Greco would probably get five stars from me solely based just on their Mythos beer availability. One sip of the Coors Light of Greece and I’m sunning on the shores of the Aegean talking pretentiously about Euripides like it’s the summer of 2000, man. Good times.
ANYWAY, the food at El Greco is excellent too. I’ve had everything on the menu now, I think. Best pita bread I’ve ever had. Awesome gyro meat. Appropriately rich moussaka. Great Avgolemono. Particularly well-​seasoned souvlaki.
The folks at the counter are nice and, though most menu items are a tad overpriced, I’ve never had to pay for extra tzaziki. Score.

I have had several requests for our family avgolemono recipe, so just thought I’d post it. Off the hook greatness!
Here it is: makes 3 – 4 servings
Ingredients:
49 oz chicken broth (homemade is best, but store bought such as Swanson’s will do)
½ cup Orzo
Juice of 4 lemons
4 eggs
½ tsp corn starch (optional if you like it thicker)
Bring broth to boil and add orzo. Cook for about 9 minutes until orzo is cooked and then remove from heat.
Remove one cup of broth and allow it to cool until room temperature.
Meanwhile, in a bowl beat eggs and lemon juice until foamy. Slowly add the lukewarm broth to the egg mixture.
Then, VERY SLOWLY add the egg/​broth mixture back into to the soup on low heat stirring constantly until soup thickens (This is when you add the cornstarch if you like).
Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.
It can be refrigerated then reheated by stirring constantly over a double boiler.
I also add chopped sauteed onions and red bell pepper and cooked chicken breast to it sometimes for a little kick.