Homemade liquid warmth: soup is sunshine in a bowl for Alaskans.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: Alaska Business Power Lunch

Fall is upon us and winter is just down the road--time to turn to soup. Nothing warms and comforts the body like soup, and restaurants and cafes all over the state know this. They get that concept at The Bake Shop in Girdwood. Michael Flynn, owner of this renowned bakery and cafe in the mountain valley, serves a wide range of inventive and hearty homemade soups that are bottomless --meaning all you can slurp down. And they are on a schedule so you can show up for your favorite: Sunday, it's vegetable beef barley; Monday through Thursday, chef's choice; Saturday, Szegedin goulash; and, Friday, New England clam chowder. And for a few pennies extra, you can add a slice of the bakery's excellent sourdough bread with it. The Szegedin goulash is especially filling.

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"The goulash is one we've been doing for 40 years," he said. "It was traditionally a stew, but we came up with doing it as a soup because it is so hearty, and because it's a traditional German recipe and the original owner was of German descent and my wife is of German descent."

Flynn said the soup is a mix of pork, pork stock, sauerkraut, onion, sour cream and caraway seeds that they roast at the cafe.

A bowl of any of The Bake Shop's soups is a great way to end a day of skiing.

In Anchorage, Arigato on Spenard has delicious miso soup--a light and healthy broth made of fermented soybeans rich in antioxidants and protective fatty acids. With this soup, you go away knowing you just got a blast of healthy soy protein.

Across Benson on Spenard, the Manoulis family at Pizza Olympia makes Greek avgolemotho; an egg-lemon chicken soup that combines the soothing stock of chicken with the creamy richness of egg topped off with the tart kiss of lemon. It's a complete meal and the Mediterranean version of the classic chicken soup our mothers fed us when we were sick.

Across the street at the Middleway Cafe, in its new and larger location in the Northern Lights Shopping Center, there are daily specials of soup on a rotating schedule. Middleway's garden veggie is chock full of the season's best in a rich vegetarian broth.

Not far away, at the Bear Tooth Theatre Pub on West 27th, every day a luscious, spicy Yucatan lime with chicken soup is served along with daily soup specials like--meat chili.

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Sahara, at the northeast corner of C and Fireweed (with access either south on from C or behind the pawn shop) offers their own version of chicken soup, and for...