This used to be a nice restaurant, a few years ago...

This used to be a nice restaurant, a few years ago. It seems things have taken a turn for the worse.

Atmosphere: The new location is much roomier and the decor is mostly nice, but the bench in my booths was uncomfortable and squeaked loudly when I leaned back against it. There's a piano wedged between the booths on one wall that seems out of place. I can only imagine that, had the piano been in use, it would have be much too loud for people sitting in the adjacent booths, only 3 feet away. The TV (muted) on the wall above the bar was showing the news. The music playing over the speakers was decent and was set to a decent volume, not too loud to have a conversation, yet not too quiet to hear.

Service: Wait staff was polite and attentive, and did their best to address our concerns.

Menu: The menu is very, very overcrowded. While there are 12 soups to choose from, as you might expect by the name, there are also 10 appetizers, 5 salads, 3 empanadas, 7 entree bowls, 6 flatbreads, 6 desserts, and a whopping 12 sandwiches (even if you don't count the fact that one of the sandwiches has 6 different varieties). That's 61 food choices for one smallish restaurant, and again, that doesn't count the fact that items like the panini and the "cubamanti" have numerous unique options.

Drinks: We only ordered sweet tea and a Diet Coke, but the Diet Coke tasted bad and had an oily film on the surface. We don't know if it was the glass, the syrup, the machine, or the ice, but something was very wrong with it.

Food: Unfortunately, the drinks were where our experience went sour, and it kept going downhill from there. A few items on the menu were out of stock, and I understand that sort of thing happens from time to time, but it's especially more likely to happen when you have an overcrowded menu. The veggie panini platter we ordered had almost no peppers or shrooms, was completely loaded with olives, and packed with spinach--the spinach wasn't even listed on the menu. Things got worse when we found a long, black hair tangled in the greasy, nearly-translucent fries (not just on top). When we told the staff, they offered to make it right, but we declined and they took the food back and removed it from the check.
The cuban sandwich (platter) was greasy and tough, and came with black beans and rice even though we ordered fries, although given the state of the fries on the panini platter, I wasn't completely disappointed with the mistake. At that point, I had completely lost my appetite from the "mystery hair," but the staff had caught their error and brought out a side order of fries with an apology. We didn't look at them to see if they also included hair.

Overall: Years ago, I used to recommend Stone Soup to my friends, even after they changed their french fry recipe to something less tasty, but given the downward spiral that this place seems to be in, I can neither recommend it, nor do I wish to return. While I prefer eating in local restaurants, this isn't one of them. Thankfully there are plenty of better options nearby.