California Pizza Kitchen Serves “Two In A Bowl,” What? -The Toast

The last time I ate at a California Pizza Kitchen was for a friend’s 12th birthday, because one had just opened up in Manhattan and it was totally a thing for preteen girls who were suddenly self-aware about the concept of eating healthy. I think I got a chicken pizza? Anyway, I had put the place out of my mind until last week, when for reasons that are neither here or there I found myself at their location in a mall in Connecticut.

I don’t mean to disparage anyone’s tastes but we need to address the alphabet soup that is the CPK menu. Some of the dishes sound like a dare.

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Chicken tequila fettuccine makes no mention of actual tequila but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Or is tequila more of a state of mind here? Does it just make you wish you had some? And I really, really try not to be that New Yorker pizza snob but what is this thing about putting 12 avocados on top of something and calling it “California.” PIZZA DOESN’T NEED THAT.

Anyway, the most astounding menu item was “Two in a bowl.”

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It’s two soups in one bowl. That’s it. Whatever two soups you want, together, finally. I don’t think it’s the concept here that confuses me because sure, sometimes you want lentil soup and minestrone, and by Grabthar’s hammer you should have it. But they gave it a name! And the name is TWO IN A BOWL! It is somehow too straightforward for my mind to comprehend. Two in a bowl. Yes. Soup there. Both.

Jaya Saxena died as she lived: contemplating soup.

Jaya Saxena is a Staff Writer at The Toast.

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+57 Vote up Vote down

daisymerolling 120p · 486 weeks ago

"I'm at the pizza kitchen-the California pizza cafe-kitchen cafe chicken California pizza cafe!"
Obligatory Tig Notaro Taylor Dayne reference.

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11 replies · active 485 weeks ago

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miprisci 132p · 486 weeks ago

The better half and I were waiting around for a movie the other day and the CPK was right next door, so we said what the heck. I actually got that chicken tequila fettuccine thing, and it was just so boring. It wasn't gross, exactly, but it just tasted like creamed salt.

I can't comment on the Two in a Bowl, because no comment can be made.

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rilo_cryley 130p · 486 weeks ago

Two in a bowl is worth...a soup in your hand.

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4 replies · active 486 weeks ago

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miprisci 132p · 486 weeks ago

I'll also say that I had the misfortune of marrying a New Yorker, so now that we live on the West Coast, no pizza is ever good enough and we rarely even eat pizza because she's so disappointed in it. I try to argue, "It's still pizza! It's still good, even if it's not as good as what you grew up with!" to no avail.

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26 replies · active 485 weeks ago

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kellycatchpole 139p · 486 weeks ago

"Jaya Saxena died as she lived: contemplating soup."

hands down, best-ever byline.

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1 reply · active 486 weeks ago

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littlehuntingcreek 135p · 486 weeks ago

in Soup Focus groups, CPK discovered that the problem about soup was that people couldn't decide which soup, so CPK decided on Two Soups in One Bowl

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4 replies · active 485 weeks ago

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houblonchouffe 123p · 486 weeks ago

TO BE FAIR I have seen this basic concept in high-end restaurants before? A chef friend of mine did a beet soup duo (can be viewed on MrChouffe's Flickr) a few years back* and it was lovely and very tasty.

*I can't believe I found this image, it is from 2011 and not in an album

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6 replies · active 486 weeks ago

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chiaroscuromom 108p · 486 weeks ago

"Two in a bowl" is to me wayyyyy too close to an infamous internet artifact that I will not describe/reference in greater detail.

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8 replies · active 481 weeks ago

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Egg · 486 weeks ago

I say this as a Californian: Claifornia Pizza Kitchen is basically the pure embodiment of my favorite line from any of DeLillo's novels--"Californians invented the concept of lifestyle. This alone warrants their doom."

I APOLOGIZE FOR MY STATE.

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4 replies · active 486 weeks ago

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nancysriracha · 486 weeks ago

I worked at a restaurant where a lady would regularly demand that we serve her two soups in one bowl and it was usually some abhorrent combination of soups and I really don't know how she slept at night. I'm truly appalled that CPK is actually encouraging something so awful. And I hope this doesn't mean that people will now go to regularly old restaurants and start demanding multiple soups in one bowl and disgusting everyone. Also, how on earth did they get the soups perfectly divided like that? Do they have special bowls??

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10 replies · active 486 weeks ago

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gothicfemale 120p · 486 weeks ago

If they did Two in Two Bowls, I might just be interested.

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1 reply · active 485 weeks ago

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malloryelis 142p · 486 weeks ago

I HAVE GOTTEN THAT TWO SOUP BOWL DEAL AND IT OWNS

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5 replies · active 485 weeks ago

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ksek 140p · 486 weeks ago

Oh gosh this reminds me of one of my favorite witnessed moments (which has no right to be one of my favorite witnessed moments).

At a sushi place at the Detroit airport (I like to live dangerously), a man ordered two menu items. The waitress responded, "You know those are both soups right? One is a cup and the other is a bowl." The man replied with a gruff "Yes." And all I could imagine was the man being given these soups, dropping the cup in the bowl, and chugging it, bomb-drink style. (Unfortunately, no such thing happened.)

Looking back, he probably had no idea they were both soups, and was too embarrassed to reorder.

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1 reply · active 486 weeks ago

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jennycieplak 120p · 486 weeks ago

BY GRABTHAR'S HAMMER!!!!!!!!!!

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6 replies · active 486 weeks ago

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kefuoe 110p · 486 weeks ago

I'd like the Two in a Bowl, but in two bowls, please. And can you make both of the soups crab and corn chowder?

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1 reply · active 486 weeks ago

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protocoach 117p · 486 weeks ago

I feel like, in my life, I'm not using "BY GRABTHAR'S HAMMER, ..." frequently enough.

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Cat · 486 weeks ago

TOO MANY SOUPS (TOO MANY SOUPS)
TOO MANY SOUPS (TOOOOOO MANY SOOOOUPS)
Too many soups won't fit in a bowl
Just shove it into your food hole
A dash of love and laughter too
In my Fettucine Tequila Sooooup

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longlostlullaby 122p · 486 weeks ago

I'm not ashamed to admit that I really enjoy California Pizza Kitchen's BBQ chicken pizza and lemonade. Also I'm in Russia right now and the pizza here is terrible, so I'd take pizza from basically anywhere in America right now.

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9 replies · active 485 weeks ago

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fireblargg 137p · 486 weeks ago

Jaya, why are you spending so much time at 12-year-olds' birthday parties?

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1 reply · active 486 weeks ago

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tragicallyludicrous 115p · 486 weeks ago

The California Pizza Kitchen at the mall in the city I grew up in is right by the big fancy front entrance no one ever uses because the parking garage has its own entrance. The one time I think I ever ate there, as my friend and I were leaving, Snoop Dogg and his entourage came up and went into the mall through the fancy entrance. Of course, we followed, because honestly, didn't you want to know where Snoop Dogg was going in the Cherry Creek mall? Eventually he and his entourage shut down one of the mall music stores and were letting people in one at a time to buy signed CDs. I bought one. It's still at my parent's house.

Nothing really to do with California Pizza Kitchen, except the association will always be there in my head.

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OpheliaInWaders 123p · 486 weeks ago

I hope they do a special Christmas Two Soups, which would of course be tomato and split pea.

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3 replies · active 486 weeks ago

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Meg · 486 weeks ago

I'm so much more confused by soup than I ever thought possible. I mean, if I want lentil and tomato at the same time and can't decide, I feel like putting both in one bowl means I get neither lentil nor tomato? So I think I'm getting everything I want when I am actually not getting anything I want. Whereas if I just pick one soup I at least get one thing that I want.

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InsertCoolNameHere · 486 weeks ago

I kinda live for the original chopped salad, and this is one place that my 8 and 12 yr old can agree on.

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1 reply · active 486 weeks ago

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Liz · 486 weeks ago

In defense of the "two soups, one bowl": Duarte's Tavern in Pescadero, CA has a cream of artichoke soup and a cream of green chile soup. Individually, they are great soups, but the combo is transcendent.

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2 replies · active 486 weeks ago

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halloweenjack64 115p · 486 weeks ago

The "two in a bowl" thing sounds pretty neat, if you know what you're getting into. It's like the rise of self-serve soda fountains where you found out that mixing cola and orange soda was actually pretty good.

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7 replies · active 485 weeks ago

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chiefcomplaint · 486 weeks ago

Ok so here's my theory on two soups/one bowl: frequently at chains of this type, soups are the one food item that waitstaff is allowed to nip at. And yes I speak from experience here. Now, over time, one gets bored with the same array of soups, no matter how much bread you soak them up with (again, see manager approved foods for starving waitstaff). This leads to experimentation and the combining of soups. Adding tomato bisque to crab chowder, etc etc. My guess is that there's some combination of CPK soups that is amazing and after time managers caught on to the habits of their creative and hungry employees...?

Just a stab in the dark.

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aurant · 486 weeks ago

My parents went to CPK nearly every saturday for probably a decade, up through the final month before the divorce went through. They actively hated each other but they were still there. I guess some things are sacred.

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hushup · 485 weeks ago

I worked at two St. Louis CPK locations while I was in college in the early-to-mid aughts and the two-soup-one-bowl thing was popular even then. This trend goes back at least a decade! I do not care for most soups so I have not tried it, but plenty of Midwesterners were into it.

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rosemarynotroses 126p · 485 weeks ago

This whole place sounds like if you'd just told Salvador Dali about the concept of pizza.

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klave · 485 weeks ago

The only time I went to CPK, I'd been in the US for a couple of weeks with work and my dour British digestive system was barely coping with two weeks of American restaurant food. I was flying home that afternoon, CPK was right next to my hotel, I'd been pooping and napping and cramping the whole weekend and I needed something very, very gentle to eat.

Bingo - CPK did gluten free plain cheese pizza. I ordered the pizza. The pizza arrived. I began eating the pizza and reading my book.

No fewer than five different servers (including the fellow British one they brought out specially to meet me, who seemed kinda drunk on sunshine or possibly just regular-drunk) came by my table to to tell me how proud they were of their gluten free pizza base, and to ask how I was enjoying it. And it was all I could do not to scream, "THIS IS JUST ABOUT THE ONLY THING MY SHUDDERING TRACT CAN TOLERATE RIGHT NOW, I DO NOT GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT HOW PROUD YOU ARE OF IT, LET ME READ IN PEACE."

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al3ab-banat01 87p · 464 weeks ago

نجدد ترحابنا بكم في العاب بنات التي تعتبر من افضل الالعاب على الاطلاق وعندها جمهور كبير جدا وهي بدورها تتضمن التلبيس والمكياج وكذلك الطبخ وتلعبها البنات بكترة واصبحت مشهورة جدا في السنين الاخيرة مما جعل مواقع الالعاب تصبح كتيرة وهناك كتير منها مشهورة متل فرايف و كيزي ومواقع اخرى كما ان هناك ايضا موقع جميل عربي يقدم تشكيلة من العاب بنات مميزة ومتجددة يوميا هذا النوع بدوره يشمل اصناف كتيرة سنتعرف عليها الان ومن بينها العاب الطبخ الدي يملك معجبين كتر جدا ويعتبر هو الاول تم يليه العاب التلبيس وهذا الآخر ممتع ويحبه الكتير لان التلبيس تعشقه البنات اكتر من الاولاد وهذا امر بديهي ومعروف وبعده بالتتابع يوجد العاب المكياج او الميك اب نوع جميل ومحبوب عند الصغار والكبار ويبقى في الاخير نوع قص الشعر وهو الاقل اهتماما

California Pizza Kitchen Serves “Two In A Bowl,” What?

ByJaya Saxena

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