The New York City chef who inspired the infamous Soup Nazi character on Seinfeld is expanding his restaurant worldwide. Al Yeganeh plans to open up 50 SoupMan franchises in Britain next year, with openings in Germany, Italy and Japan to follow. His original restaurant, Soup Kitchen International in Manhattan, is what inspired the Soup Nazi episode on Seinfeld. Just like at the American restaurant chain (there are 20), employees will follow Yeganeh's strict rules. Customers must have their money ready and move to the left after ordering or they can be denied service (the rules are on the restaurant website). The employees do not yell, "No Soup For You", however. It's amazing to me that he's still making money on the venture, considering the episode aired in 1995.

Anybody ever eaten at a SoupMan restaurant? How's the mulligatawny?

[Via TV Tattle]

(S01E11)  Darnit, CBS! The schedule says Old Christine starts at 9:31 but the network keeps starting it early, so my TiVo always cuts off the first joke of the episode. Maybe I'll start caring enough to change my TiVo to a manual start at 9:30.

There were two good things about this episode: Matthew (Hamish Linklater) and the box office guy. I missed the first joke from Matthew, but I did dig the game where he had Christine guess what people in the obituaries were asking for 'in leiu of flowers'. I sure hope the writers make more use of Matthew when Christine returns for season two. And, the guy in the box office did a bang-up job with his scene. He played the sarcasm very well, making Christine think she can get into the Rolling Stones concert at the last minute-- not once but twice. That could've been played over-the-top but he took a more even approach to it.

Let me preface this by saying I think Jerry Seinfeld is a funny guy and that Seinfeld is one of the great sitcoms of all-time.

OK, having said that...

I was watching the Seinfeld episode where George breaks up with a woman but he wants to go over to her house and get the books that he left there. Jerry asks him what this obsession with books is that people have. You've read the book, so why do you need to keep it on your shelf like it's a work of art of something? This gets a big laugh of the audience. You've read the book, who cares what happens to it?

So I guess this means that if I contact Seinfeld he'll send me all of his CDs and DVDs? Hey, he's listened to/watched them once, I'm sure he doesn't need them anymore.